The spread of the Omicron variant will not delay or otherwise affect Abu Qir Fertilizers’ plans to sell 10-15% of the company in a secondary offering this month, Emad El Din Mostafa, head of Chemical Industries Holding Company, told Enterprise yesterday. The virtual roadshow drumming up interest from potential institutional investors recently kicked off and the transaction is still on track to close in around two weeks’ time. Mostafa downplayed the impact of the variant-induced market jitters on Abu Qir’s planned stake sale, saying that investor sentiment remains intact and “whoever has appetite for the sale will still buy.”

No quotas set for institutional or retail portions: Any investor — whether institutional or retail — can place their bids for shares during the bookbuilding process, which will take place online, with no quotas reserved for either type of investor, Mostafa said. The offer price will be ±10% of the average share price during the 90 days prior to the sale, Mostafa previously told us.

Background: Abu Qir has pushed back the secondary stake sale several times since first announcing it in 2018, with the state’s privatization program suffering delays thanks largely to global market turmoil and then the pandemic.

Advisors: CI Capital and NI Capital are co-lead managers on the offering.

Ghazl El Mahalla FC’s micro-IPO is also two weeks away: State-owned football club Ghazl El Mahalla will make its EGX debut within two weeks, becoming the first publicly-traded Egyptian football club, Public Enterprises Minister Hisham Tawfik told CNBC Arabia (watch, runtime: 1:44).

The club expects to raise EGP 135 mn from the sale, which will see it list up to two-thirds of its shares on the bourse. Bookrunner Prime Holding will allocate shares worth EGP 37 mn to institutional investors, while the remaining EGP 98 mn will be earmarked for retail investors.

Watch this space: Ghazl El Mahalla FC’s offering is tiny, but it could pave the way for football giant Al Ahly to list as much as 49% of the club.

e-Finance’s success on the EGX has re-energized the state privatization program. The state-owned digital payments firm concluded one of the EGX’s biggest IPOs in years in October, raising some USD 370 mn in a sale that saw heavy demand from foreign and local investors alike.