Empower raises nearly $724 mln following book-building process

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Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower) has set the final offer price for its initial public offering (IPO) at AED 1.33 per share, at the top of the price range, raising nearly AED 2.7 billion ($724 million).

This comes following the successful completion of the book-building and public subscription process for its IPO, the UAE state-owned WAM news agency reported.

Following two successful upsize announcements, a total of two billion shares, equivalent to 20 percent of Empower’s total issued share capital, were offered.

This will result in approximately AED 2.7 billion of gross proceeds for Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) and Emirates Power Investment (Emirates Power), an indirectly wholly owned subsidiary of Dubai Holding (Dubai Holding), upon settlement.

After completing the Empower IPO, DEWA and Emirates Power will continue to own 56 percent and 24 percent of Empower’s existing share capital, respectively.

Upon listing, Empower will become the world’s largest district cooling services provider on a stock exchange.

The offering saw significant investor interest, with total gross demand for the IPO over AED 124.6 billion at the final offer price, implying an oversubscription level of 47x times for all tranches combined at the final offer price.

Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, chairman of Empower, said that the success of the privatisation programme so far shows that Dubai is well on its way to achieving the vision to increase the total volume of its stock markets to AED 3 trillion.

Empower is expected to commence trading on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) on November 15. The company will have a market capitalisation of AED 13.3 billion on listing.