Saudi Aramco reached about $2 trillion in market value on the first day of its 2019 stock-market listing.
Saudi Aramco began trading on the Saudi Exchange, or Tadawul, on December 11, 2019. Its shares rose by the daily limit, giving the oil producer a valuation of roughly $2 trillion and making it the world’s most valuable listed company at that point.
The initial public offering priced the shares at 32 Saudi riyals each and raised about $25.6 billion. That made it the largest initial public offering at the time, surpassing the amount raised by Alibaba’s 2014 listing. Saudi Aramco later offered additional shares, changing the publicly traded portion of the company.
The $2 trillion figure represented the market value assigned by investors to the listed company, not the value of every oil reserve under Saudi Arabia. Energy prices, production expectations, and geopolitical conditions can all affect the company’s market capitalization.