March 28 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabian budget airline
flynas, which is backed by billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin
Talal, is planning to float on Riyadh’s bourse, the kingdom’s
markets regulator said on Friday.
The nearly twenty-year-old company is going ahead with plans
to sell a 30% stake, according to a statement by the Saudi
capital markets authority, joining a raft of companies that have
flocked to Gulf bourses in recent years.
The flynas prospectus will be published prior to the start
of the subscription period, the statement added.
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 United Arab Emirates’ Air Arabia and Kuwait’s
Jazeera Airways, and the first in nearly two decades.
Launched as Nas Air in 2007, flynas serves over 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, who was
once the country’s best-known international investor, buying up
holdings in companies like Citigroup, Twitter and Four Seasons.
Saudi Arabia’s PIF sovereign wealth fund bought around 17%
of Kingdom Holding in 2022.
The prince, a member of the kingdom’s vast ruling family,
was detained in 2017 amid a sweeping purge of elites by de facto
ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but released the
following year after striking a confidential agreement with the
government.
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.
The kingdom, which attracts tens of millions of religious
pilgrims a year to holy Muslim sites in Mecca and Medina, has
revamped its tourism industry to attract non-religious tourists.
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.
(Reporting by Yomna Ehab and Enas Alashray; Writing by Yomna
Ehab and Federico Maccioni; Editing by Louise Heavens and Jan
Harvey)
