POWERHOUSE

Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, Managing Director and CEO of the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), led the utility provider to raise $6.1 billion in an IPO in April, making it the largest company on the Dubai Financial Market. IPO activity among state-owned companies is heating up in the Middle East.

- JAMILA GANDHI

On April 12, 2022, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) became the largest company on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM), raising $6.1 billion in a long-awaited IPO and giving the firm a market cap of $33.8 billion.

“The IPO was 37 times oversubscribed, indicating institutional and retail investors’ confidence in DEWA as a leading global utility company,” says Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, Managing Director and CEO of DEWA.

At the time of the listing, DEWA’s IPO was the largest in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa since Saudi Arabia’s Aramco raised $29.6 billion in late 2019. The Dubai government sold 18% of its stake in the state-owned utility firm, equating to nine billion shares, at $0.68 per share. The IPO attracted a total of $85.8 billion from sovereign funds, private funds, and over 65,000 individual investors.

Days after DEWA’s market debut, its neighboring counterpart, the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA), became the top-ranking publicly-listed utility company in the Arab region, with a market capitalization of $41.9 billion based on its share price on April 19, 2022. Globally, the market size for utility companies is expected to grow by nearly 9%, from $5.5 trillion in 2021 to $6 trillion in 2022, according to a report by ResearchAndMarkets. The market is anticipated to reach $8.1 trillion by 2026.