Saudi Arabia’s budget airline flynas is planning to float on Riyadh’s bourse, the country’s markets regulator said.
The nearly twenty-year-old company, which is backed by billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, is going ahead with plans to sell a 30 per cent stake, according to a statement issued by the Saudi Capital Markets Authority (CMA) on Friday.
Flynas will be joining a raft of companies that have flocked to Gulf bourses in recent years.
Flynas IPO plan
The flynas prospectus will be published prior to the start of the subscription period, Reuters reported, citing the CMA statement.
The carrier is set to debut after a years-long boom in the airline industry following the COVID-19 pandemic, and as Saudi Arabia has made tourism key to its domestic economic agenda.
The listing would be only the third by a Gulf airline after the UAE’s Air Arabia and Kuwait’s Jazeera Airways, and the first in nearly two decades.
Launched as Nas Air in 2007, flynas serves more than 70 destinations with more than 60 Airbus A320 and A330 jets.
The airline is targeting a fleet of 160 aircraft by 2030.
Among its shareholders are Kingdom Holding, the Saudi Arabian investment company founded by Prince Alwaleed.
Saudi Arabia’s PIF sovereign wealth fund bought around 17 percent of Kingdom Holding in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is spending billions of dollars overhauling its economy to create new industries and jobs and develop a vibrant private sector to reduce the country’s dependence on oil rents.
Tourism is a major pillar of the economic overhaul and the government is establishing a new state-owned airline, Riyadh Air, to start operations next year.
Other major airlines in Saudi Arabia are Saudia and flyadeal, both state-owned.
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