Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil and gas company KazMunayGaz (KMG) has entered the stock exchange markets in Astana and Almaty, after several delays. KMG raised, through this initial public offering (IPO), around US$330m from the sale of 18.3 million shares (around 3% of its total shares).
More than 129,000 applications were received from investors for the IPO, which was the largest on Kazakhstan’s stock market in terms of the number of bids received and final sales volume. However, it was slightly undersubscribed, as investors bought only 3% of KMG’s shares whereas the company was offering 5% of them.
Before the IPO, Samruk-Kazyna, the sovereign wealth fund that controls state assets, owned 90.4% of KMG’s shares, while Kazakhstan’s central bank owned 9.6%. KMG is only the third company to complete an IPO since the “People’s IPO” scheme was announced by the Kazakh government in 2011.