Egyptian dairy and juice maker Juhayna is offering 206 million shares at LE 5.64 ($1) each to raise LE 1.16 billion, it said in an announcement published in a newspaper on Sunday. In a statement to the stock exchange website, the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) said that it approved exempting obligatory tender offer submitted by Pharon Investment Limited to purchase 162,713,368 shares, representing 31.26 percent of Juhayna Food Industries' shares. The issue, Egypt's first IPO since 2008, involves offering 80 percent of the shares in a private placement and 20 percent to the public. The public subscription closes on Thursday, the company said. Results of the placement would be announced to the stock exchange on Monday. The company had said on Saturday that the private placement was oversubscribed. The global financial crisis put a stop to IPOs in Egypt after oil services company Maridive and real estate company Palm Hills Developments sold shares in mid-2008. "The IPO will help finance future expansion projects, helping the company grow in the food production industry," Juhayna's chief executive officer, Safwan Thabet, was quoted as saying by Al-Akhbar newspaper. "The capital increase is not intended to pay any debt or as a result of the recent fire in one of our six factories, but to allow us to enter new investments in dairy production and to plug the current gap between the size of our production and our land reclamation projects," he said.
