“It’s behind us,” he said of Kingdom’s Citi investment.
Steve Jobs
In 2005, Alwaleed sold most of the stake in Apple he’d acquired in 1997, telling Bloomberg News in an interview that any upside in the iPod and Steve Jobs’s efforts “have already been put in the price.”
The billionaire refused to call the Apple sale a mistake, and said he invested the proceeds in Saudi real estate projects that have equaled Apple’s sevenfold return over the eight years. Valuing Saudi property is difficult because land transactions in Saudi Arabia aren’t taxed or reported by the government.
From its July 29, 2007, offering price of 10.25 riyals ($2.73), Kingdom has returned 134 percent against Apple’s 269 percent. The company makes up more than two-thirds of Alwaleed’s $32 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg ranking.
After an initial spike, Kingdom began to slide in trading after the company’s IPO. By November 2008, it had dropped below 9 riyals, surpassing the offering price on only two brief occasions during the following three years. The shares began to climb in the second half of 2012 after Kingdom reported improved results from its real estate and equity investments.
‘Sold Nothing’
“When I went public in 2007, I committed nothing of my shares,” Alwaleed said. “I said I’d remain a 95 percent shareholder of my company. Since then, I’ve sold nothing, not a single share, nothing. Zero.”
The company’s market value is obscured by the fact that only 5 percent of its shares are traded and, according to data collected by Bloomberg, no analysts cover the company.
Since September, anticipation about Twitter’s public offering has been partly responsible for Kingdom’s rise, according to Alwaleed. Twitter tumbled a record 24 percent on Feb. 7 after its first earnings report since since the offering showed slowing usage and user growth. In December, Alwaleed said the value of his Twitter stake had quadrupled to $1.2 billion.