The EGX could see as many as four companies debut shares during the second half of the year, EGX Chairman Mohamed Farid told Reuters.Want to know who? Farid is keeping us guessing. The EGX boss didn’t mention which companies could go public or when, only telling the newswire that they operate in the IT, agriculture and chemicals industries.Is Banque du Caire among those in line to go public before the year is out? Farid brushed off questions about whether the state-owned bank will IPO this year, saying only that “state-owned offerings are under the purview of the relevant ministerial committee.”BdC should, in theory, be one of the companies to IPO, after the Financial Regulatory Authority this week gave it — along with Sky Light Touristic Development, New Castle Sports Investment and City Trade Securities — a new deadline to complete its IPO by the end of the year. All of the companies have listed shares on the exchange but are yet to offer shares to the public.But then again… A source told us that the FRA could extend the deadline again if the companies don’t manage to IPO by the end of the year.Other likely contenders: State-owned e-payments company E-Finance, which was said earlier this year to be lining itself up for a 2H2021 IPO, and non-bank financial services player Ebtikar, which is planning to go public in the final quarter. Cosmeceutical giant Macro Group is looking ot the fall to pull the trigger on its IPO, having recently hired EFG Hermes to quarterback the transaction alongside Renaissance Capital, which had previously shared the mandate with CI Capital.Earlier this year, it looked like ministers were about to brush the cobwebs off the state privatization program, when Public Enterprises Minister Hisham Tawfik told us that a government committee would meet to decide which companies would be chosen to IPO.Since then, it has been radio silence: The minister said in April that two or three state companies could sell shares in 3Q but we still haven’t heard anything concrete as we head into the third quarter.Conventional wisdom is that it will take new paper to spark the return of foreign institutional investors to the EGX. The EGX is now deep in the grip of retail traders and is down more than 8% YTD. Our regional rivals, meanwhile, are soaring: Saudi’s Tadawul is up more than 25% so far this year, the ADX has climbed nearly 33% and the DFM is up 14% since the start of the year.

BdC is one of at least four companies that now face a year-end deadline to go public. The news comes after the Financial Regulatory Authority decided (pdf) to again extend deadlines for companies to complete their IPOs. Failing to pull the trigger on their IPOs by 31 December would likely mean they would have to start the approval cycle from scratch. Banque du Caire is the most high-profile example of a company that got the green light to IPO and then shelved plans after listing its shares. In an Egyptian IPO, a company with regulatory approval to go ahead with a first-ever offering of equity is generally required to list its shares before the offering is priced and trading is allowed to begin. Weeks can pass between the time shares are listed and the start of trading, and more than one IPO has been shelved in that interval thanks to changes in market conditions. Who’s affected? Though the FRA statement did not name names, Reuters says sources at the EGX told it the decision covers Banque du Caire (BdC), Sky Light Touristic Development, New Castle Sports Investment and City Trade Securities and Brokerage, all of whom have yet to offer shares for sale, and all of whom have previously gotten extensions. The new date is an extension of previous deadlines: The FRA had granted BdC and the three other companies a six-month grace period ending on 31 March 2020, to complete their IPOs, before extending the deadline to December 2020 at the height of the covid market turmoil in March of last year. This was then extended for another six months until 30 June this year. The four companies must also submit a timeline for their planned IPOs by 30 September, the FRA statement said. This is a deadline in the loosest sense of the word: The deadline could be extended further if the listed companies don’t manage to meet the set date due to market conditions or other barriers, a source close to the matter told us. BdC has not yet decided on the size, time or pricing of its offering, the source told us, adding that these details would be decided by market conditions closer to the date. BdC, Egypt’s third largest state-owned bank, was aiming to raise some USD 500 mn through its IPO, which was expected to be the country’s biggest sale of state assets since 2006. The bank had planned to list on the EGX back in 2017. That offering was postponed, and the bank later was aiming to offer 20-30% of its shares on the exchange in April 2020, but postponed its IPO to the end of 2021 due to the market instability that followed the pandemic.