Inside the Gulf IPO boom

The Gulf has become one of the world's most active IPO regions. In late 2024, Lulu Holdings, the Abu Dhabi-based retailer, raised $1.7 billion on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, and weeks later Talabat, the Dubai-based delivery platform, raised about $2 billion on the Dubai Financial Market in the UAE technology sector's largest listing. Both were heavily oversubscribed, and both traded up on debut, capping a run in which Gulf exchanges repeatedly topped global listing-volume tables.

The pipeline behind them is structural rather than cyclical: Saudi Arabia is selling stakes in state companies and family businesses under Vision 2030, the UAE is monetising mature private champions, and Oman, Qatar and Kuwait have opened their own pipelines. For Gulf capital markets, the boom is the arrival of the region's private wealth on public screens.

Who has listed

Exchange data and deal trackers put GCC IPO proceeds in the high single-digit billions of dollars in a typical recent year, with spikes whenever Riyadh sells a major state stake.

Why now: three engines

First, fiscal. Oil producers prefer monetising assets to borrowing when budgets tighten, and Saudi Arabia in particular uses listings to fund Vision 2030 projects without debt. Second, liquidity. Regional markets absorbed MSCI and FTSE inflows after 2019, local pension and savings pools grew, and Gulf retail investors learned to subscribe to IPOs as a savings habit, oversubscription multiples in the hundreds are routine. Third, succession. Family conglomerates facing generational transition use public markets to institutionalise governance and unlock value.

What sells and what sticks

The pattern across recent deals: utilities, toll roads, logistics, retail and food distribution sell well because cash flows are legible; technology and consumer internet commands the highest multiples, as Talabat showed. What sticks after listing depends less on the story than on float: several state sell-downs left free floats thin, which supports prices but limits institutional interest and index weight. Exchanges have responded with minimum-float rules to widen ownership.

The buyer base is also changing. Sovereign and regional funds anchor large books, foreign funds take index-driven positions, and Gulf retail demand, often the swing factor in allocations, has become a permanent feature that Western issuers do not enjoy.

One feature distinguishes Gulf listings from Western peers: the anchor shareholder stays. Most regional IPOs sell minorities, leaving the state or the founding family in control, which stabilises strategy and dividend policy while capping the float. Investors are buying partnership in a champion, not control of it, and the governance questions that follow, related-party dealing, board independence, disclosure appetite, are the ones experienced Gulf allocators interrogate first.

The risks

Three are worth naming. Supply: the pipeline is state-managed, and a fiscal improvement can slow it abruptly. Valuation: oversubscription reflects scarcity of paper as much as fundamentals, and post-listing performance has been mixed outside the marquee names. And rate competition: Gulf IPOs compete with Treasuries and sukuk for the same regional savings when dollar yields are high, a headwind through the 2022-24 cycle.

The 2025-26 pipeline suggests the boom is institutionalising rather than exhausting: Saudi Arabia queued state stakes in sectors from banking to logistics, the UAE's exchanges marketed successive family-business listings, and Oman and Kuwait revived dormant privatisations. Supply, not demand, has been the binding constraint, and the region's savers have absorbed every tranche offered so far, a fact each new deal's subscription figures will continue to test.

How a Gulf IPO is actually built

The anatomy is consistent across the region's deals. A government or family owner appoints bookrunners and sells a stake, typically 10 to 30 percent, through a two-track process: an institutional bookbuild that sets the price, and a retail tranche, in Saudi Arabia often a substantial slice, allocated at or near the bookbuild price. Marketing runs on sovereign roadshows and domestic media; oversubscription multiples are published like sports scores; and listing day customarily opens flat-to-up, with stabilisation rarely needed because allocation scarcity does the work. Lock-ups on remaining insider stakes, commonly six months, and index fast-entry rules then govern the aftermarket.

For allocation strategy, the practical notes are few and unglamorous: institutional orders scale with index weight and float, retail tranches in Saudi Arabia allocate in rounded lots and refund the balance, and the aftermarket's most predictable trade is the lock-up expiry, when supply arrives at a date published at listing. Participants who track those mechanics, rather than the launch-day headlines, capture the boom's repeatable part.

How to participate

Retail access runs through local brokers on the DFM and ADX and through Saudi participation channels when Riyadh markets offers to individuals. Institutions subscribe in the bookbuild. For the mechanics of opening the first account, see our guide to buying shares on the Dubai Financial Market; for the tax treatment of gains once you hold them, our explainer on the UAE corporate tax sets out what applies.

The boom's honest summary: Gulf exchanges finally have the issuers, the savers and the rulebook to run a permanent listing business rather than a once-a-decade event, and the 2024 Lulu and Talabat deals are the template.