KazMunayGaz is set to go public in early December

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Special correspondent of the "News" department
The public offering will be completed by December 10, 2022

KazMunayGas (KMG), the national oil company in Kazakhstan is going to go public at the beginning of December 2022. The National Welfare Fund Samruk Kazyna, which owns 90.42% of the company, is expecting KMG’s initial public offering (IPO) to be completed before December 16, when the country celebrates Independence Day, according to Ernar Zhanadil, head of business development and privatization department of Samruk Kazyna.

«We want KMG to go public in early December. We would prefer to complete the IPO before the holiday season, which usually starts in the middle of December. That’s why we are planning to finish the process by December 10,» he said.

According to the official, the holding is now considering how many shares the company can offer investors. Anyway, Samruk Kazyna will keep its controlling stake (usually 51% of shares), Zhanadil told the Kursiv edition.

«I think we will complete the formalities and make a corporate decision by November 9. If everything is on schedule, we will announce that information on the same day,» the official said.

The holding is going to divide all investors into three groups. The first group will consist of citizens of the country. The holding is going to satisfy all purchase bids from this category.

«The first group is the group of investors from Kazakhstan. We are going to set a ceiling for them and meet every bid within this ceiling. The second group is institutional investors from Kazakhstan and those Kazakhstani citizens who buy more than the ceiling. There are such big retail investors in the country and there is nothing wrong with that. Our goal is to make this offering competitive and fair,» he said.

The last group is going to include foreign institutional investors such as funds, insurance companies, and brokerage firms.

«The third group of investors includes international institutional investors. We are going to offer them the remaining stocks. We want them to participate, we do not set any restriction, but we must give priority to our citizens and institutional investors,» Zhaladil pointed out.

The potential IPO of the KMG was announced this summer by Almasadam Satkaliyev, CEO of the Samruk Kazyna fund. During the Astana Finance Days conference, he said that the fund and the company have negotiated with Kazakhstan’s leading investment banks to guarantee the IPO is open for all retail and institutional investors in Kazakhstan. 

On July 13, 2022, Dauren Karabayev, CFO of KMG confirmed that the national company is going to facilitate retail investors by providing them with more time to open accounts and file their purchase bids.

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