Saudi Aramco revealed, on Thursday, that it raised $6 billion in the first issuance of dollar sukuk compliant with Islamic law, in an effort to meet the huge distributions it committed to shareholders.
The company said in a statement that the sukuk is in three tranches; for three, five, and ten years, with returns of 0.946%, 1.602%, and 2.694%, respectively.
The company stated that the sukuk will be direct and unsecured, and without the right of recourse to the assets.
She said that the total number of sukuk amounted to 30,000, with a nominal value of $200,000 each.
The company's vice president, Khaled Al-Dabbagh, said in the statement that Aramco's first international Islamic bond offering "has achieved the largest order book ever in the world for a dollar-denominated sukuk deal."
Al-Dabbagh explained that the issuance attracted "more than 100 new investors from different countries, including those who had not previously invested in sukuk."
This is the third issue after two non-Shari'a-compliant bonds; The first was in 2019, which raised $12 billion, and the second last November, which raised $8 billion.
Aramco is the main source of income for the Saudi treasury, and on June 9, it launched its first sukuk denominated in US dollars.
When offering part of its shares in an initial public offering, in December 2019, Aramco pledged to distribute dividends to shareholders of $75 billion annually.
However, the company’s revenues declined sharply in 2020, due to the decline in global demand for oil and the collapse in prices, under the pressure of the repercussions of the Corona pandemic, which pushed it to the roads of the local and global debt markets.
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