On October 3, 2018, the Aramco Company and its refinery complex was in an international valuation was priced at $2 trillion. On November 12 and during his speech addressing the staff of Aramco, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman valued the complex 1.5 more times than what experts had priced and insisted on a $2 trillion (£1.65 trillion) valuation of oil firm Aramco, even though some bankers and company insiders say the kingdom should trim its target to around $1.5 trillion. Prince Mohammed put a $2 trillion valuation on the state company in early 2016 when he first proposed a share sale to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy beyond oil.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

Some questions have been raised for equity investors: What valuation will the company and the banks seek? More than three years ago, Prince Mohammed spoke of a $2 trillion valuation. Is that realistic? Will they try for that?

What will the dividend be for publicly traded shares of Aramco? High dividend rates will increase the value of the shares, but low dividend rates would likely scare away investors when they see that the government collects tens of billions of dollars in dividend from the company each quarter.

Saudis intended to list 50 percent of shares of Aramco Company in New York Stock markets. If the company with the valuation of $4 trillion was presented in the New York stock market, in fact, it could earn Saudis over $2 trillion for financing the war against Yemen by taking money from investors in the stock markets in New York like NASDAQ or Dow Jones by listing the company. A glance at the needs for continuation of war against Yemen reveals this truth. During the early days of attacks on Yemen and fight with Houthis and for strengthening Saudi bases, Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit was predicted at $100b because at that time Saudi Arabia’s economy and investment was completely under impacts of the war against Yemen. According to reports, each Patriot missile costs Saudi Arabia $3m and for shooting down of every ballistic missile, the country needs to fire at least 3 Patriot missiles. In another words, shooting down of seven ballistic missiles fired by Yemeni forces (provided that they could have succeeded in shooting them down) cost the Saudis $21m.

Since March 2017 till March 2017, hundreds of short-range and around 100 ballistic missiles have been fired by Yemenis towards Saudi Arabia but their destruction have ruined millions of dollars from Saudi treasury.

Agreements and contracts for buying S-400 and THAAD anti-missile systems can be assessed in this framework and these amounts of money are except from those millions of dollars that Saudi Arabia has spent for the maintenance and protecting Patriot missiles in different parts of its country.

So regarding what was to happen in New York stock markets, which sane man can believe that Donald Trump could allow the flight of such a huge capital from the U.S. financial reserves?

The common sense says that Patriots should face tens of drones and but they do not function. The common sense says that THAAD missiles or any anti-missile system even with billions of dollars of investment should allow Aramco Company to leave and delist from the New York stock market.

And there is no sane man in the world can believe that half of Saudi Arabia’s exports capital would be destroyed and in return Donald Trump plays with words as if he is prepping up dialogues for kids’ games.

So we should accept that satellites were seeing drones and fired missiles from Yemen flying over Aramco, but they did not react , although our religious belief says even if they were to react, they would have failed.

 By: Hamid Reza Naghashian