Nawras IPO drew subdued retail interest

Retail buyers took up only 38.5 per cent of the initial public offering of shares in Oman telco Nawras, a unit of Qatar Telecommunications, two sources familiar with the deal said on Thursday.

The telecoms firm had reserved as much as 70 per cent of the offer to retail investors, with the rest earmarked for institutional investors. Earlier in October, Nawras extended the IPO period by a week due to tepid retail buy-in.

Nawras raised 182 million rials ($472.6m) after the offer priced at the bottom of its range at 702 baisas per share.

It sold 260m shares in total and had expected to raise as much as 127m rials from retail investors.

"Nawras raised only 70m rials from retail investors and 112m rials came from institutional investors," a source familiar with the IPO, told Reuters.

"Clearly the retail investors did not have much appetite for the IPO, and it was left to institutional investors to come to the rescue," the source said.

Nawras will list on the bourse on November 3.

Nawras, which broke the monopoly of state-controlled Omantel in 2006, was aiming to raise as much as $608m and had put up 260m shares priced between 702 and 902 baisas in the Gulf Arab state's first IPO sale through a book-building process.