Saudi Aramco became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company at its 2019 initial public offering.
Saudi Aramco’s shares began trading on the Saudi Exchange in December 2019. The offering valued the company at about $1.9 trillion, making it the largest initial public offering at the time and briefly giving the oil producer the highest market capitalization of any listed company.
Saudi Aramco is the national oil company of Saudi Arabia and is widely regarded as one of the world’s largest integrated energy companies. Its operations include exploration, production, refining, chemicals, and distribution. The company’s size is closely connected to Saudi Arabia’s vast petroleum reserves and decades of oil production.
The initial public offering sold only a portion of the company’s shares. The Saudi government retained ownership of the remainder, so the market capitalization represented the value of the entire company based on the price assigned to the publicly traded shares, not merely the value of the shares offered to investors.