Retail investors poured into higher education management company Taaleem’s IPO last week, leading the retail portion of the offering to close more than 29x oversubscribed on Thursday, bookrunner CI Capital announced, according to Al Mal. Retail investors placed bids for 525.6 mn shares by the close of play on Thursday, compared to the 17.9 mn on offer to them. The company, which is selling a 49% stake on the EGX at EGP 5.75 a share, has offered a 2.45% stake to retail investors with the rest being allocated to institutional players.

Appetite among institutional investors was also strong: The 340 mn-share private placement was 2.34x oversubscribed when it closed last week. CI Capital Investment Bank CEO Hesham Gohar told us that the institutional tranche of the offering had “generated very strong interest from quality investors from the GCC, Europe, South Africa and Egypt, among others.”

Who’s selling? The selling shareholder is an SPV named Sphinx Obelisk, which offered the shares in a secondary sale. CI Capital, which had acquired a 60% stake in Taaleem in 2019 from Thebes Education Management Holdings in an EGP 1.2 bn transaction, is thought to be among the shareholders selling down its stake.

When do the shares go live? Taaleem shares will begin trading on the EGX on 7 April under the ticker TALM.

Good tidings for our long-dormant IPO pipeline? Leading cosmeceutical and neutraceutical player Macro Pharma will start trading on 19 April as it wraps up its IPO, while consumer healthcare giant Integrated Diagnostics Holdings kicked off a roadshow for its technical listing on the EGX last week. State-owned e-payments platform e-Finance and non-bank financial services player Ebtikar are also among the total of five or six IPOs that EGX boss Mohamed Farid expects will hit the exchange this year. Look for those last two in the second half of the year, we think.