Saudi Arabian Fintech Firm Rasan Plans to Sell 30% Stake in Riyadh IPO

Saudi Arabian fintech firm Rasan intends to sell a 30% stake in its Riyadh initial public offering, making it one of the first companies from the sector to go public in the kingdom.

Rasan and its investors will offer 22.7 million shares in the IPO, including 5.3 million new shares, according to a statement on Sunday. Bookbuilding for institutional investors will run from May 12 through May 16, while retail investors will be able to bid from May 29 to May 30.

Rasan has hired Morgan Stanley and Saudi Fransi Capital as joint financial advisers, bookrunners and underwriters for the offering, Bloomberg News reported in 2023. Rasan had revenues of 256 million riyals ($68 million) in 2023.

Founded in 2016, Rasan operates online insurance platforms such as Tameeni and Treza. In 2021 it closed an investment round of 90 million riyals led by Impact46, a Saudi alternative asset manager.

Rasan will be the fourth Saudi company to announce an IPO in the last two weeks, as the kingdom’s listings market picks up after a brief lull. Saudi medial group Dr. Soliman Abdul Kader Fakeeh Hospital launched an IPO of as much as $763 million on Thursday that was sold out within an hour.

The water treatment firm Miahona Co. stopped taking investor orders on Thursday after being multiple times oversubscribed, while Saudi Manpower Solutions Co. announced its listing plans on April 29.

While Saudi Arabia has been a busy IPO market for the past two years, most newly-listed companies haven’t been from the technology sector. One of the few was the food delivery firm Jahez, which raised 1.8 billion riyals in a heavily oversubscribed IPO in late 2021.

Rasan joins other tech firms in the kingdom eyeing IPOs, such as the buy-now-pay-later company Tabby and the online cosmetics retailer Nice One, Bloomberg News reported in January. Along with other Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia is trying to diversify its stock exchange beyond the banks and industrial companies that have typically dominated it.

Photograph: Visitors sit in a room displaying stock price information displayed on a digital screen inside the Saudi Stock Exchange, also known as the Tadawul, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday, April 10, 2018. Photo credit: Abdulrahman Abdullah/Bloomberg

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