Ivory Coast sells $228m stake in Orange Unit in rare IPO
Ivory Coast raised $228 million listing part of its stake in the local unit of Orange SA on the West African stock exchange, becoming the regional bourse’s second initial public offering in three years.
The Dec. 30 listing on the Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières, or BRVM, raised 141 billion CFA francs ($228 million) as the Ivorian government sold a stake of about 10% in Orange Cote d’Ivoire SA to investors, according to the prospectus. The stock gained 7.5% on its first day of trading, according to the exchange’s website.
It traded at 10,390 francs on Friday, an increase of 9.3% from the listing price, according to bourse data.
This IPO “will show other state-owned companies that it is important to come to the market,” BRVM Chief Executive Officer Félix Edoh Kossi Amenounve said in a Nov. 28 interview before the listing. “It is a privatization by the Ivory Coast government and that will be an example to the other countries in our region.”
The mobile operator’s debut may help revitalize a bourse that hadn’t seen any listings for three years until November’s initial public offering by NAS Ivoire Holding, an aviation services provider. More privatizations could boost state revenues at a time developing nations are priced out of international capital markets.
A recent study showed that 80 to 100 state-owned companies in West Africa are eligible for listings, Amenounve said.
“Because of the situation our governments are facing in terms of raising capital on the international market, they may look now to the possibility of raising capital using privatization,” he said. “We have been expecting this IPO for many years.”
The BRVM Composite Share Index has companies from Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Ivory Coast, which first announced plans to list Orange Cote d’Ivoire shares in 2016. Ivory Coast owned 14.95% of the company before last week’s listing. The BRVM is based in the Ivorian commercial hub of Abidjan.
