Saudi Arabia's state-run oil and gas company Saudi Aramco has confirmed plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO) in 2020-2021, once the acquisition of a 70% stake in Saudi petrochemical group SABIC will be completed. In March 2019, the group agreed to acquire a majority stake in SABIC from the souvereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund (PIF) for US$69.1bn. The acquisition of SABIC, the world's fourth largest petrochemicals company, will comfort Saudi Aramco's strategy to grow in the downstream sector and to invest in refining and petrochemicals to secure new markets for its crude oil production. The acquisition will boost its current petrochemical production capacity of 17 Mt/year by 62 Mt/year. It will also strengthen Saudi Aramco ahead of its planned initial public offering (IPO), initially planned for 2018 but postponed to 2021.