Skip to content Skip to Search
Skip navigation

Saudi’s first privatised mill to offer 30% stake in IPO

Nature, Outdoors, Plant Reuters/Viacheslav Musiienko
First Milling Company's market share stood at 33.8 percent in 2021

First Milling Company, the first mill to be privatised in Saudi Arabia, is planning to launch an initial public offering (IPO) on the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul).

The company will offload 16.65 million shares, resulting in a free float of 30 percent of the flour milling company’s share capital, it said in an IPO document.

The final price of the offering will be determined at the end of a book-building period. No dates were given when the book-building process will begin.

First Milling has a daily wheat milling capacity of 4,200 tonnes and a feed mixing capacity of 900 tonnes. It operates four large-capacity production facilities in Makkah, Al Qassim, Tabuk and the Eastern Region.

The document said the company’s market share stood at 33.8 percent in 2021.

“We have a clear and focused strategy that will allow us to boost our market share and capture the strong potential growth in the market. This includes building scale and capacities, enhancing operational and financial efficiencies, expanding into new product categories, improving distribution and sales channels, and sustainably growing revenue and profit,” said CEO Abdullah Ababtain.

SNB Capital Company was named the financial advisor, lead manager, and bookrunner. SNB Capital and GIB Capital were named the underwriters.

First Mills’s total sales reached SAR 801 million ($213.60 million) in 2021, as the three-year compound annual growth rate hit 11.5 percent.

In the first nine months of 2022, the company achieved sales of SAR 687 million. Gross profit reached SAR 310 million and net income reached SAR 197 million during the period.

First Mills was the first of several flour milling privatisations in Saudi Arabia, sold to AlRaha AlSafi Food Company-consortium for $540 million in 2020.

The consortium was led by Saudi Arabian firm Almutlaq Group, including AlSafi Holding Company, Abunayyan Holding and UAE’s Essa Al-Ghurair Investment. 

Latest articles

Emirati director Nayla Al Khaja. Her film 'Three' is currently being shown in UAE theatres in Mandarin using Camb.ai's AI translation programme

Dubai startup helps AI-voice cloning take centre stage

A YouTube video released in January of Novak Djokovic shows the tennis star speaking fluent Spanish at a post-match press conference.  While the Serbian champion is renowned for speaking several languages, in this case his voice was created by an artificial intelligence tool developed by a Dubai-based startup, Camb.ai. The original Djokovic footage was taken […]

Alec IPO SeaWorld Abu Dhabi

Alec IPO could start listings rush in construction sector

A listing by Dubai’s Alec Engineering and Contracting could open the gates for more construction-related companies to go public as they take advantage of the country’s buoyant property market, according to a business expert. Alec, which is backed by the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund, is behind some of the […]

A Saudi woman works inside the first all-female call centre in the kingdom's security sector, in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 29, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

Saudi Arabia unemployment fell in Q4 2023

Unemployment among Saudi Arabian nationals fell to 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023, from 8 percent during the same period in 2022, the government said this week, reflecting the growth of the non-oil sector despite an economic contraction.  Unemployment among Saudi males was 4.6 percent, which was up from 4.2 percent the year […]

Saudi finance minister Mohammed al-Jadaan

Saudi FDI inflow up but still far short of target

The net inflow of foreign direct investment into Saudi Arabia was just over SAR13 billion ($3.5 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 16 percent on the previous period, government data said this week.  The data, released by the General Authority for Statistics, puts the total net inflow for 2023 at SAR46 billion, which […]