Many more questions than answers have been raised by last week’s sale of an additional US$11.2 billion of shares in Saudi Arabia’s flagship company Aramco. Much has been made by Aramco sources that the issuance attracted many more international investors than the original initial public offering IPO in December 2019 but as virtually none in the Western investment community took part back then, this appears as a largely redundant comparison.
8 billion for the year, boosted by additional performance-linked dividends intended to keep up with the higher dividend payments offered by some major Western oil and gas firms. These added dividends are designed to target 50-70 percent of Aramco’s annual free cash flow, net of the base dividend, and other amounts including external investments, according to Aramco’s chief executive officer, Amin Nasser. In Q1 2024, the base dividend was US$20.