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Lulu taps banks for IPO this year: Supermarket chain operator LuLu Group International has reportedly tapped Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Citigroup, Emirates NBD, and HSBC Holdings to work on its planned initial public offering on the ADX this year, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Moelis & Company has also been appointed as an independent financial advisor for the IPO.
The offering could raise as much as USD 2 bn, Bloomberg’s sources say, although no details were provided on the exact timing and size of the offering. The business information service reported last month that the IPO is expected to happen in 2H 2024, with the company considering a potential dual-listing on the ADX and Riyadh’s Tadawul. Abu Dhabi-headquartered LuLu — which valued itself at north of USD 5 bn in 2020 when it sold a stake to Abu Dhabi wealth fund ADQ and last explored the possibility of an IPO in 2022 — is likely to list its GCC assets in the transaction.
In context: Dual listings in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are rare, with MENA restaurant operator Americana Restaurants being the most recent company to go for an ADX + Tadawul listing in 2022.
About LuLu: LuLu has 18 hypermarkets and seven shopping malls in its pipeline as it pushes ahead with aggressive growth plans. It has some 70k employees across more than two dozen countries, but its centers of gravity are the GCC, India and, more recently, Egypt.
