ADES International Holding, the Saudi oil and gas driller backed by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, plans to kick off investor meetings for its planned initial public offering as soon as this month, people familiar with the matter said.
(Bloomberg) —
ADES International Holding, the Saudi oil and gas driller backed by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, plans to kick off investor meetings for its planned initial public offering as soon as this month, people familiar with the matter said.
The company is targeting a first-half listing and is likely to soon file with the Saudi regulator, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. It has picked Lazard Ltd. as a financial adviser to work on the IPO, they said.
Any deal would add to the $6 billion raised through Saudi IPOs over the past 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A listing could value the business — whose clients include Saudi Arabian Oil Co. and Kuwait Oil Co. — at about $5 billion and raise about $1 billion, Bloomberg News reported in November.
Saudi Arabi’s Public Investment Fund teamed up with the major owners of ADES to take the business private in 2021, in a deal valuing the company at about $516 million. ADES, which provides oil-and-gas drilling and production services in the Middle East and North Africa, has since grown through acquisitions.
The company bought seven jack-up rigs last year from Seadrill Ltd. for about $628 million in cash. In all, ADES has 84 onshore and offshore rigs across markets including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia, it said at the time.
Deliberations are in the early stages and no final decisions have been made. The PIF declined to comment, while representatives for Lazard and ADES didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Updates with context on IPO volumes in third paragraph.)
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