Rami El Dokani, Chairperson of the Egyptian Exchange (EGX), has expected that TAQA Arabia, a subsidiary of Qalaa Holdings Group, will be traded on the stock market starting from July.
He added that TAQA Arabia is in the final stages of offering, as reported by Daily News Egypt this week.
A total of 1,352,353,800 shares at a nominal value of EGP 0.50 apiece will be listed in EGX.
At the beginning of this month, the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) Listing Committee agreed to temporarily list the shares of TAQA Arabia, under the ticker symbol (TAQA.CA). TAQA Arabia is available for direct trading without offering, with an issued capital of EGP 676.2m, distributed over 1.35 billion shares, with a nominal value of EGP 0.50.
TAQA Arabia, a Cairo-based Qalaa Holdings subsidiary, serves over 1.7 million customers in 50 Egyptian cities with energy and utility services, including natural gas, electricity, renewable energy, petroleum products, and water.
TAQA Arabia builds, runs, and upkeeps energy infrastructure, including gas transmission and distribution, in eight Egyptian governorates.
Al Dokani said that EGX management is growing more interested in promoting the Egyptian capital market to the private sector, because it is more important to EGX than government offerings.
He continued: “The reason for EGX’s interest in private companies with regard to listing and offering in the market is the sustainability of listings coming from the private sector.” On the other hand, government offers may be driven by current economic reasons.
He said that the exit of foreigners from EGX during the last period was due to the instability of the exchange rate, and despite that, the head of the stock exchange believes that the Egyptian market is still attractive.
He added that EGX witnessed the registration of eight companies with an issued capital of EGP 1.2bn, from November 2022 to this June.
He stressed readiness to launch an index compatible with Islamic Sharia during the second half of this year, in line with the requirements of investors wishing to invest in shares of companies that comply with Sharia.
He explained that a special trading program is under development. It will allow receiving requests to buy and retrieve gold fund documents from member brokerage firms. That contributes to creating an active secondary market for trading these documents in coordination with the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA).
He stressed the importance of launching the gold investment fund to regulate the market and increase its transparency. This will also lead to rationalizing the demand for buying bullion, gold pounds, and artifacts that are acquired for the purpose of investment, especially with the presence of a regulated alternative that allows investors to invest in precious metals without the need to actually buy gold from the markets and keep it.
Evolve Holding, in cooperation with Azimut Egypt, launched the first investment fund in precious metals (gold), with an initial size of EGP 152m.
Al-Dokani said that the main index of the market grew by 23% during the first six months of this year, noting that it increased in a year from last July to today by 10,000 points. He added that the classification of EGX, compared to the performance of the Arab stock exchanges, is the first place.
He pointed out that trading values rose and exceeded EGP 2bn per day, after the average trading recorded about EGP 500bn pounds in the first half of 2022, explaining that cash dividends during the first half ranged between EGP 23bn-24bn.
He explained that EGX seeks to improve and raise the quality of corporate disclosures in order to support and improve the quality of information available to small and large investors alike.
