Saudi Arabia plans second stock offering of its oil giant Saudi Aramco worth billions

Saudi Arabia is selling more shares of its state oil company, Aramco, which is worth billions of dollars. This is the second time they are doing this since they first sold shares to the public in 2019. The company announced the sale online, saying they will offer 1.545 billion shares priced between $7.12 and $7.73 each. At the highest price, these shares would be worth about $11.9 billion. The sale will start on Sunday for big investors and on Monday for regular people who want to buy shares. Aramco is a very valuable company, worth $1.8 trillion, making it the sixth most valuable company in the world. Only a small part of the company, 1.73%, has been traded on the Saudi Arabian stock exchange since it went public in 2019. This new sale is for 0.64% of all the company's shares. The Saudi government still owns most of Aramco, but some shares will also go to the country's investment funds as they try to make their economy less dependent on oil. Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil, which is easy and cheap to get because it's close to the surface in the desert. Aramco's shares were priced at $7.75 each on Thursday, but they have lost about 12% of their value since the beginning of the year. Last year, Aramco made a profit of $121 billion, which is less than the record profit they made in 2022 because energy prices were lower.