Empower IPO: Share price to be confirmed on November 9th as Dubai District Cooler looks for new overseas territories

Dubai: Empower will confirm the share offering price on November 9th and apply for a DFM listing on November 16th as another Dubai government agency revises its “public limited company” status. Empower, the world’s largest provider of district cooling services, has an 80 percent stake in Dubai and confirmed that next growth-oriented moves could take it into some of the other Gulf markets.

In Egypt, Empower has been invited to participate in tenders, but no decision has been made yet. What matters to IPO investors will be the company’s established presence in Dubai. “We have a highly visible revenue stream, predictable cash flow and a solid balance sheet,” said an Empower spokesman. “We will be adding an additional 370,000 RT (Refrigerated Tonnes) from existing master developers to the existing 1.6 million RT from 81 district cooling plants in Dubai in the short term.”

So what will Empower’s IPO price look like? Market analysts see a stock range around the Dh2.30-Dh2.50 as a strong possibility. The previous one in Dubai, Salik, had put it flat on Qh2, which also helped him get off to a rousing start on the trading day. DEWA had theirs at Dh2.48 and Tecom Group opted for Dh2.67. Empower, in which DEWA owns 70 percent, plans to pay dividends of at least Dh850 million twice a year for the first two years.