The allotment gap: an application is not a holding

The public offer of ordinary shares in Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals FZE closes on 27 October 2026. The day before a close is a useful moment to read an offer, because the window is still open and the documents that govern it are already fixed. The date is on the issuer's own offer page. The stated terms give the open as 14 September 2026. The stated size is 4.1 billion ordinary shares at a fixed ₦525, about ₦2.15 trillion if the offer is taken up in full. That figure is the size of the offer. It is not a sum the issuer has reported as raised.

On 21 October, Proshare Research put open and announced offerings, leaving aside that week's Treasury bill and FGN bond auctions, at about ₦2.23 trillion. This offer was more than 95 percent of that total. It had been due to close on 13 October. The date in that register is the date on the offer page now. On 16 October the same desk called it the largest public offer in Nigeria's stock market history.

The terms in that register are specific.

• The price is fixed at ₦525, and it is payable in full on application.
• The minimum application is 10 shares, which is ₦5,250, and further applications are in multiples of 10.
• Retail applicants apply electronically. Qualified investors may apply electronically or on the application form.
• The shares rank equally with the issuer's existing ordinary shares.
• An increase is limited to 30 percent above the stated offer. Proshare puts the fully exercised figure at about ₦2.80 trillion.
• A retail incentive may add up to two further shares at no extra cost, and only if the holder keeps a stated minimum holding for the stated periods.
• Proshare records that the offer has been screened as meeting a Shari'ah threshold, on an independent assessment.

A price is published before the window opens. A minimum application is published with it. The number of applications is not a published return until the issuing houses collate them. An increase above the stated size arises only if those returns are above that size. The offer already limits such an increase to 30 percent, and the Commission has to approve it.

An application is not yet a holding. The holding, if it comes, is the allotment published after the window, together with the return of any money that is not allotted. That distance is the allotment gap. The offer page states it in one step: confirmation that an application was submitted is not an allotment. Applications are processed under the offer terms after the offer closes, through channels the Commission has approved. An applicant needs a bank verification number, and a name that matches the bank record.

That is the part an institution can use on the day before the close. The price does not move because the window is about to shut. The minimum does not move. The limit on extra shares does not become the issuer's to lift. What changes at the close is that new applications stop. Whether those applications are above the stated size, or short of it, is not a fact the day before the close can settle.

The number of applications is itself unpublished. In its 16 October note, Proshare recorded that the only figure then in circulation was verbal. Aliko Dangote had told journalists that applications had reached more than three or four times the amount originally intended. Separate commentary projected that applications might finish at 70 to 80 percent of the stated size. The notice of extension published no figure, and neither the issuing houses nor the Commission had released a return. Proshare adopted neither reading. A large stated size does not establish that the offer has been filled, and it does not establish that it has fallen short.

The issuer's notice of extension sets out what comes next. Collation of returns is dated 3 November 2026. The basis of allotment goes to the Commission on 10 November 2026. A no-objection, if that timetable holds, is dated 17 November 2026. The notice says those dates are indicative. Surplus or rejected application money is returned 5 business days after the allotment date. Holdings are credited 15 business days after that no-objection.

None of this is a view on the refinery, or on whether an applicant should send an application before the window shuts. Those questions sit in the offer documents and with each applicant's own adviser. This note stops at the structure that is already public.

A primary energy offering is a published price, a set of documents, and a licensed path for applications. The record of who holds the shares is made after the window closes, not at the moment an application is sent.

The question for an institution, once 27 October has passed, is whether the collated returns are above the stated size or short of it. An increase is a question only in the first case, and only within the 30 percent the offer already allows. In either case, the document that matters is the basis of allotment.

The documents carry the claim, and the token is the record of that claim.