I Bought Dangote Shares 20 Years Ago. Here Is Why I Am Not Rushing Into This IPO

Twenty years ago, I bought my first Dangote shares in an IPO. I was twenty-one, medical student, and the company was Dangote Sugar Refinery. The shares were eighteen naira each, so naira Nigerian currency, which is about the equivalent of fourteen cents back then. So if you're looking at it in dollars or if you're comparing in British pounds, that's about eight pence. So I bought, but I was able to buy the minimum subscription. I've subsequently owned Dangote Cement and Dangote Flour as well. And now, almost 20 years later, another Dangote company is coming to the public markets. Okay. Except this one is very different. So that's Dangote Petroleum Refinery. The minimum subscription is just 10 shares. That will be ₦5,250. For context, that's about $4 or roughly £3. It sounds incredibly accessible, but that's not the number I'm focused on. More than 2 trillion naira is being raised, and ₦525 per share implies a valuation of about ₦65 trillion. So that's roughly about $49 billion. Now I'll tell you upfront, I'm seriously considering investing. I've weighed the options here, but here's the thing: Dangote Refinery could become one of the greatest businesses ever built in Africa, and And still be a poor investment at the wrong price. So while I'll show you where I'm leaning towards, I'm not going to tell you to buy it and I'm not going to tell you to stay away. What I'm going to do in this video, I'll share my thinking around it and also the decision I'm making towards buying. And if I'm going to buy or not buy, how much I'm going to be buying or how I'm going to determine how much risk exposure. I'm going to share exactly how I'm thinking about it before deciding To put my own money in. We'll look at the business, the extraordinary numbers it has recently reported, the debt— they've got some debt as well— the roughly $14 billion expansion plan, the valuation, and of course, what could go wrong, because I have to look at both sides of the coin. And there's one more thing. If you're Nigerian but living abroad, perhaps in the UK, Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, or elsewhere, the next bit is crucial. There's one extra calculation I think you absolutely need to make. Because making money in naira doesn't necessarily mean you've made money in pounds or dollars. I'll show you exactly what I mean using my own Dangote investment from 20 years ago, comparing it to naira and dollars now. By the end, I'll tell you what I'm personally thinking: buy the IPO, wait for it to hit the secondary market, or perhaps do a little bit of both, or stay away totally. Hello, if we've never met before, I'm Dr. Andy Egwim. I'm a former salaried NHS GP, that's family physician, founder of Moneywise Doctor, and author of The Moneywise Doctor, which was a UK Amazon bestseller on investing. So I've got a copy here, thousands of copies sold. I've been investing for more than 21 years, and investing played an important part in helping me reach financial freedom, which allowed me to leave my 9-to-5 salary job 4 years ago. Through Moneywise Doctor platform, I've now taught more than 4,400 doctors about investing, taxes, pensions, and personal finance. And every week, more than 10,000 doctors receive my free financial education newsletter. But perhaps most relevant to this particular video is the fact that I've actually invested in Dangote companies before. So this is not simply theoretical for me. I've been watching this particular IPO with particular interest. Before we go any further, a quick disclaimer. Disclaimer, this is financial education. It's not personal advice. It's not personal financial advice or a recommendation for you to buy or sell Dangote Refinery shares or any other investment. Investments can go down as well as up, and you may lose some or all of your capital, and your circumstances may be entirely different from mine. So right now that I've got that out of the way, Let's start with what I think is the most important distinction in this entire video. Dangote Refinery, the business, and Dangote Refinery, the investment, are not necessarily the same thing. I will explain. Let's start with what I think is the most important thing in this entire video. There are 10 points to consider. I've thought about this around 10 points, and I'll run through all of them with you in this video. Quickly to help you to make your own decision. Number 1, the business and investment are not the same thing. Whenever I'm looking at a company, I try to separate 2 questions. Is this a business I would like to own? And at the price being offered, is this a good investment? Those are 2 different things to consider. They are related, but you have to consider them. They are not the same question. And Dangote Refinery makes that distinction particularly important because there's an awful lot to admire about this business. It's a brilliant business. This is an enormous industrial project. Around $20 billion has reportedly gone into building it. I mean, the current capacity is about 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day, with plans to potentially double that to around 1.4 million barrels of oil per day. Think about what that means. Nigeria is one of the world's major crude oil producing countries, but for decades we've had a strange situation where we produce crude oil, export some of it, and then import enormous quantities of the refined products we actually use. It always felt strange, even while I was growing up in Nigeria. Petrol, diesel, jet fuel, and so on. We import all of that. So a refinery of this scale potentially changes that equation, not just for Nigeria, but potentially for other parts of Africa as well. And we are already seeing exports of refined products. So when people get excited about this business, I get it, especially as someone who grew up in Nigeria before moving to the UK. There's a huge domestic market, and I invested in Nigerian stock market as well in the past. So there's export potential, there's petrochemicals, there's possibility of further expansion, and it's an asset that would be extremely expensive and difficult for a competitor to simply reproduce. So they have a moat. 7. There are 7 steps to take before you even start thinking of investing as a doctor or healthcare professional. Now, this is really important to secure your financial foundation Before you start investing. Now, I've covered these 7 steps in a simple guide that I've made available for you in the link in the description. You can download it. It will help you to build a solid financial foundation, avoid common investing mistakes, and also make tax-efficient investment decisions. Start your investment journey the smart way. Download the guide now using the link in the description, and good luck on your investing journey. Now let's get Right back to the episode. I've heard the term anchor infrastructure used to describe businesses like this. I quite like that, to be honest, because Dangote has a history of building businesses around things local economies need— cement, sugar, food, and now energy. So one question going through my mind is this: has Dangote built another economic toll bridge, something sitting at an important point in the economy Through which an enormous amount of activity may have to pass, possibly. And whatever your view of Ali Kudangothe personally, I don't think you can dismiss his record as an industrial operator. He has demonstrated over several decades that he can build very large businesses. So do I like the story? We have to look at the stories and the numbers. Okay. So yes, I like the story. Do I like the underlying business? Yes, possibly. But now we need to ask the harder questions. We need to take a closer look at the numbers because there's a story and there are the numbers. So what am I being asked to pay? That leads us to number 2. ₦525 doesn't tell me whether it's cheap. This is probably one of the most useful investing lessons in the entire video. The offer price, yes, is ₦525 per share. We already know that. And the minimum is apparently only 10 shares. So that's ₦5,250. So it's deliberately very accessible. They're even using the phrase, the IPO for the people. Hmm, interesting. And I actually like the idea of ordinary people, everyday people being able to own part of a major African business. But don't confuse 2 things, guys. It's investing. Let's be clear-minded. Affordable and cheap are not the same thing. Affordable and cheap are not the same thing. Let me show you what I mean. Imagine I own a company worth ₦1 million, or let's say $1 million. I divide it into 100 shares. Each share represents $10,000 of that company. Now imagine I divide exactly the same company into 100,000 shares. Each share is now $10. Has my company suddenly become cheaper? Of course not. I've simply cut the same cake into smaller pieces. So that's why when somebody tells me, Andy, it's only ₦525, or someone even referring to other stocks, it's just $10, my answer is ₦525 out of how many shares? How many shares outstanding? How many shares are on offer? Because share price multiplied by the number of shares equal to value of the company. The base IPO, this one, involves around 4.1 billion new shares. Based on the reported total share count after the offer, ₦525 implies an overall value of around ₦65 trillion. At recent exchange rates, that's roughly $49 billion. That's the number I care about. Not the ₦525. ₦65 trillion. Because effectively I'm being asked, would you like to own a tiny piece of this company if the whole company is valued at ₦65 trillion? Hmm. That's a much harder question. And now we need to ask, what is this company producing in return for that valuation? That takes me to number 3 point. Okay. And this is where the numbers get very interesting. Look at the reported progression. Okay. From the information and data I've gotten so far, 2024, there was a loss of approximately ₦2.2 trillion. 2025, loss of approximately ₦723 billion. And then the first 6 months of 2026, voilà, profit approximately ₦2.5 trillion. That's quite a turnaround. And that sounds fantastic. They finally reportedly generated around ₦19 trillion of revenue in the first 6 months of 2026 alone. And approximately $2.5 trillion in profit after tax. Now, that gets my attention because one possible interpretation is that we're watching this enormous asset move through its expensive construction and startup phase and then into a period where, you know, the machine begins to generate serious money. Hmm. Okay. And if that's happening, this becomes very interesting indeed. But this is also where experience makes me slightly boring as an investor. A bit skeptical, you see, because one thing I'm not going to do is to take 6 months of fantastic profits, multiply it by 2, and say, wonderful, amazing, that's what they're going to make every year forever. No, that's not how to analyze companies or investments. Nope. Let's be real here. A refinery doesn't make the same margin, profit margin, every year. Oil prices move. The price of refined products can change. Crude availability changes, like what's going on globally now with the wars. Think about a busy restaurant, you could have the best chefs and the most efficient kitchen and customers queuing outside, but if your suppliers can't deliver the ingredients, then you can't serve the meals. You don't have a business. A refinery has the same fundamental problem. However efficient it is, it needs enough crude oil at the right price to keep the refinery running. Geopolitical events change, demand changes, and ultimately margin changes, especially in this industry. So I don't only want to know how much did Dangote Refinery make in the first 6 months of 2026. I want to also know how replaceable are those profits? Can they do it again and again? That's a much more important question because we're not buying the profits they made yesterday. Now, as new investors, we are buying our share of the cash this business can generate tomorrow in the future, future cash flows. And the answer to that question dramatically changes What 65 trillion naira is worth, or $49 billion. Number 4, don't confuse a great story with a great investment. This is where investing gets interesting. I've been doing this for 21 years. In 2026, you can't analyze a company like this only using a spreadsheet and discounted cash flow analysis like we used to do. DCF. Yes, the story matters and you can't ignore that. Management matters. Competitive position matters. The size of the opportunity matters. Of course, they've got a moat, so it's hard to compete. to them. Execution matters. And Dangote has a powerful story, a powerful brand. He's one of Africa's richest and best-known entrepreneurs. A huge refinery. You can't ignore that in Nigeria. Energy import substitution, exports potentially doubling capacity, and ordinary Nigerians being able to finally own part of it. Institutions are participating. People are talking about oversubscription. The private placement was oversubscribed. Celebrities talking about it. It's almost perfectly designed to create excitement. And the story may actually be valid. I think it's valid. But the more compelling the story becomes, the more careful and skeptical and careful I become about the price, the more disciplined I want to be. Let me use property as a simple example. Imagine I show you a beautiful house. Everyone wants it. It's in a lovely, excellent neighborhood. Great schools. It's 4 or 5 bedrooms, whatever you like. Beautiful gardens, maybe even a pool behind. No work or repairs required, just moving with your bags. Of course you love it, it's fantastic. Then I ask you, would you buy it? Would you buy this property? Let's say you can, you can afford it, but you can't answer because I haven't told you the price. Even if you have deep pockets, if comparable houses in the same neighborhood are worth £500,000 and I'm offering you £300,000 for the house, you might bite off my fingers. We have a very interesting conversation and you may snatch it up. If you're in a position to buy it, if you are really a serious buyer. But what if I say for the same property, I'm asking for £2 million? Same beautiful house, completely different investment. It's the same house. Now that's— you think about it differently. That's one of my favorite principles in investing. A wonderful business can still be a poor investment at the wrong price. That takes us to number 5. IPO, initial public offer, doesn't necessarily mean getting in early and it's cheap. That's another psychological thing. People sometimes feel, finally, I'm getting in before everybody else. Not really. An IPO simply means the company is now offering shares to the public. Not that it's early and cheap. Other people may have owned the business for years. Private investors may have already invested, as it is in this case. Institutions might have invested, pension funds. The founders obviously have some shares, and some of the earlier investors may have paid less than you. Okay, that's fine. There's already been a private placement around this Dangote Refinery. Okay. And I think it sold for about ₦490 billion. And some people say the big boys have already eaten. They're just giving us leftovers. I don't think that's necessarily the way to look at it. Earlier investors usually expect something in return for taking earlier risk. They also commit enormous amounts of capital. You need to have huge capital for private placement. They invest with greater uncertainty and their money may be locked up for a while before they can sell. They can't just sell any time. Immediately after the IPO, they may have far less ability to sell than you eventually have on the stock exchange when you buy yours. So I'm not offended simply because somebody invested before me at a lower price in the private placement or whenever. My question remains: at my price, am I getting enough potential return for my risk? That's all. At ₦525, is it enough for my risk? And please remember something else: just because institutional investors are investing doesn't mean something is cheap or validates it. Smart investing Investors can make mistakes too. You don't have to look too far. The global financial crisis in 2008 showed us this. I was an investor by then, a new investor. So somebody's own due diligence doesn't replace yours. That takes me to number 6, the $14 billion expansion plans. Now, this is what I'm particularly interested about, and many people are not talking about it. The plan is to expand capacity from 700,000 barrels per day to 1.5 million barrels per day. Fantastic plan, but the estimated cost of that expansion is approximately— wait for it— $14 billion. So the IPO itself is raising around just $1.6 billion, a little above 10% of that, but you need $14 billion to expand. So where does the rest of the money come from? Now, there's nothing inherently problematic about this, but you have to think about it. Businesses don't have to fund every expansion from one IPO. The company can generate cash itself. It can borrow. It can bring in other investors. It can raise more money later. There are many ways of financing growth. But let's be real here. Make no mistakes about it. If you've been analyzing companies for a while, it's common sense. Each option for raising funding has an impact on the shareholder. The business might make the money. That would be wonderful. So they don't need to raise money. But if they need to borrow money, there's interest to pay. If it issues more shares, Your percentage and my percentage ownership may become smaller. That's called dilution. So I want to understand who is going to pay for the next stage of growth. We love growth, but who will pay for it? And that question becomes more important when you look at the debt, the debt the company already owes. Really important, really crucial. And let's look at that next. As of June 2026, the debt of Dangote Refiners was reportedly approximately $5.7 billion. That's actually down from roughly $6.2 billion at the end of 2025. I regard that direction as encouraging. But here's another investing lesson that we can't ignore. People often ask, is $5.7 billion a lot of debt? I don't know. Relative to what? If I owe $1 million but I earn $20,000 a year, we have a problem. But if I owe $1 million and reliably generate $5 million of cash every year, it's a very different conversation. So I'm less interested in whether $5.7 billion sounds frightening for a company of that size. I'm more interested in whether the refinery can generate enough sustainable cash to service that debt and fund the business, fund expansion, and eventually reward shareholders. Because shareholders don't get the first dibs on the company's money, and that's why it's common shareholders. Lenders get paid first. That's why the quality and durability of those recent profits matter so much. Now, number 8, So what could go right? I'm also optimistic. At this point, you might think Dr. Andy doesn't like this company. Quite the opposite. I think it's a wonderful company. In fact, I can see a powerful case for owning it, and I'll share some of the pros. Okay. First is scale. Okay. It's a massive company. This is already an enormous refinery. If they successfully double capacity, that's a completely different business altogether. Nothing comes close. Second is market. Okay. Nigeria itself is already a huge market. Then West Africa, then international exports. Number 3 is it's hard to replicate. You can't just wake up tomorrow morning and decide, I'm going to compete with Dangote Refinery. Good luck with that. ChatGPT can't help you to vibe code a refinery. You can go try. So the refinery has taken enormous amounts of capital, infrastructure, political navigation, and years of execution. Not easy to copy. Fourth is exports. So this is particularly interesting. A business operating in Nigeria but capable of earning revenue connected to international markets potentially has very different economics from a business earning only naira domestically. So it can earn dollars. Fifth is the ecosystem— petrochemicals, distribution infrastructure, byproducts, potential future businesses built around the refinery. And number 6 Execution. Yeah, Dangote's history matters. This doesn't guarantee future success. Nothing does. But when somebody has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to build enormous industrial businesses, we can't ignore that. So he has a track record. So yes, I can absolutely see the bull case. Okay. The pros. I can imagine looking back in 10 years and saying, hmm, ₦65 trillion, $49 billion. That was really cheap. Absolutely possible. But I can also imagine another future too. And that's what makes you a solid investor, being able to look at both sides of the coin. I can imagine a different future, which takes us to number 9, which is basically what could go wrong. This is something I do with investments I like. I deliberately try to destroy my own argument so I can look at it from both sides. So instead of asking how much money could I make, or is this going to double or 10x in a few years, I ask how could I be wrong in my thesis, my investment thesis? Number 1, Crude supply. So a refinery without crude is basically like a bakery without flour. You can't make cake, you can't make bread. Beautiful building, fantastic ovens, no flour, no bread, no cake, nothing. The refinery needs enough crude consistently at sensible economics. Number 2, margins, profits. Refining can be cyclical. Today's fantastic profit doesn't guarantee tomorrow's fantastic profit. 3, expansion. Doubling capacity sounds wonderful. Delivering another approximately $14 billion industrial expansion on time and on budget is something else. Not that easy to do. 4 is the debt. We've already covered that. I've talked about that. So let's keep along. 5 is government and regulation, especially in a place like Nigeria. This is an enormously strategic business operating in a politically important industry. Government policy matters. Regulation matters. Taxes matters. I'll leave it at that. Number 6, control. After the IPO, Alhaji Jellicoe Dangote is still expected to control the overwhelming majority of the company. Now, founder ownership is not automatically a bad thing. I actually like founders. I quite like founders having skin in the game better than hired gun CEOs. But as a small shareholder, very small shareholder, I need to remember I'm a minority owner. So management decisions, dividends, future borrowing, future share issues, related party transactions, how minority shareholders are treated, those things are going to matter. And finally, importantly, is the price. This is the risk that gets forgotten when everybody loves the company and is excited. The refinery can perform brilliantly and you can still make a mediocre or even poor investment return or even a loss. If all that brilliance was already reflected in the price you paid, then you're already at risk. And number 10, my Dangote Sugar investment taught me something else and I'll share with you. Let's go back to 2006, 20 years ago, because this is where my own story becomes relevant. That was the first Dangote IPO and I invested in it. That was Dangote Sugar. ₦18 per share. Today, around 20 years later, the share price is roughly— drumroll— ₦68. Not particularly brilliant, especially compared to other investments I've made. But you might think, oh, Andy, that was great, from ₦18 to ₦68, that's almost 4x the price. Not for me, but yes, okay, let's say it's decent, 4x, but it's 20 years. But measured purely in naira, the share price has increased Almost 4 times. But let me show you something else. When I bought it at ₦18, the exchange rate was somewhere around ₦128 to ₦130 to $1. So ₦18 represented roughly about $0.14. Okay, today at roughly ₦1,324 to $1.68, approximately is like $0.05. So in 2006, ₦18 was equivalent to $0.14. And in 2026, ₦68 is like $0.05. Interesting. Seems like I lost money on the deal. Now, please don't take those numbers and think, well, Dangote Sugar was not a good investment or anyone who invested in it lost money. That's not what I'm saying, because we have not included some other factors like the dividends from it. We have not included reinvestment. We have not accounted for corporate actions that happened in those 20 years. We're just comparing share prices, capital appreciation. And Dangote companies have historically paid dividends. I've also owned Dangote Cement, which has been a very different investment story, sound investment. So this is not me saying look at Dangote Sugar, therefore don't buy Dangote Refinery. Um, no, that's not what I'm saying. That would be a terrible analysis, and of course we don't do that here. Um, there are different businesses, different times, different valuations. But my point is much simpler, especially if you live and work abroad, the currency in which you measure your wealth and finances matter, particularly if you're a Nigerian living abroad. This may be the most important section of video for many people watching Moneywise Doctor. If you live in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Europe, wherever— see, most of my family spending is in pound sterling, okay? So when I invest internationally, I don't simply ask, did it go up? Did it double? No. I ask in what currency? Okay, so in what currency? So you have to check things like what's the naira return? Okay. Number 1. 2, what's the return after inflation? Number 3, what's the GBP or USD? So pound sterling or dollar, you know, return. So those numbers can be different. Let me explain. Suppose you put money into an investment and increases by 50% in naira. Great. Fantastic. But imagine if the naira falls significantly against the pound sterling during the same period. When you eventually convert that money back into pounds, your return may be much smaller or even negative. So potentially, if the currency movement is sufficiently large, you could make money in naira and still lose your purchasing power in pounds. Of course, the reverse can happen as well. So currency can help you or work against you. So this is not an argument against naira. Is an argument for measuring properly, being realistic, and checking all those things before you declare an investment return. So if you're a doctor living in London or Manchester or Toronto or New York or Dublin or even in Alberta in Canada or Dublin, wherever, ask yourself, what currency will I eventually spend this money in? What currency is funding my retirement, my home, my children's education, my lifestyle? That's important. Not just the currency return. Now, there's a fascinating wrinkle anyway with Dangote Refinery. This is not purely a domestic Nigerian business anyway. It exports, so some of its revenues and costs are connected to global commodity markets. So its economics may have some connection to foreign currencies. That's potentially attractive, but it doesn't magically remove the currency risk to a shareholder buying a naira-denominated investment. And this brings me to something maybe a bit more emotional. Look, I'm Nigerian and I'm British. I want Nigerian companies to succeed. I want more Africans to own productive African businesses. Yes, because I started investing in Nigeria as well as a 21-year-old. I love African markets to become stronger. But patriotism is not an investment thesis. It's not an approach to investing. Don't buy Dangote Refinery merely because you're Nigerian and don't avoid it because it's Nigerian either. So analyze it like an investment. Just separate them. Let's be logical. Your money doesn't know your nationality, I promise you. It simply earns whatever return the investment produces. That's the way I look at it with a clear head. So now we'll get to the question everyone keeps asking me in my DMs and my doctor's community, Moneywise Doctor. Andy, are you buying Dangote Refinery IPO? Buy or avoid? Okay, I get a lot of that question. So should I buy it or not? Here's where I am. I'd like to own Dangote Refinery, of course, a piece of it. But that's different from saying I definitely want to buy the IPO at ₦525 per share, especially with 4.1 billion shares or whatever being offered. Over the years, I've become less enthusiastic about feeling that I must buy something just simply because it's coming to the market. You have to buy well. So once Dangote Refinery lists, I can still buy it from the secondary market. Okay. And then I'll have the advantage of something I value enormously, and that's A bit more information, more data. I can see how the market prices it. I can read subsequent results. I can watch what happens to the margins if it stays strong or disappears. I can see what the management does with the debt that's already existing. I can understand more about that $14 billion expansion, how they want to fund it. And then I can decide at this price, do I want to own more? Do I want to buy some? I'm There's no rule saying if you don't buy an excellent company during the IPO, you've missed it forever. Some of the best companies I've invested in, I didn't buy them in the IPO. You know, I didn't buy Meta or Coinbase or Google in the IPO. Okay, if Dangote Refinery becomes a great public company for the next 20 years, I'll have plenty of opportunities to own it, to be in the market. So right now, I'm leaning towards waiting rather than taking a meaningful position in the Dangote IPO. So probably not going to be knocking down doors, but there's a slight Small complication I have to tell you about. I have something I call heartbreak insurance. I'll tell you about it. Okay. Now, this is not a technical investing or health insurance term, so it's not from medicine or finance. Please don't go searching for it on Investopedia or whatever. Here's why I call it heartbreak insurance. Sometimes I find a business I genuinely love and want to own. I like the long-term opportunity, but it seems like it's mispriced. But I'm not sufficiently convinced by the price to put in a meaningful amount of money. Into it. So no serious investment. So I wait, then the share price doubles. I think, ah, the share price has doubled. Then it doubles again, even triples. And every time you look at it, it feels like Bitcoin or one of those things. So small heartbreak, it can feel a bit of pain in your chest. Now the wrong response to that fear is FOMO, fear of missing out. Then you go ahead and throw a huge amount of money into something simply because you're frightened, it might keep going up, it might run away from you. No, we don't do that. But there's another option. Sometimes that's my heartbreak insurance. I take a small position, very small position, small enough that if I'm wrong, it doesn't meaningfully damage my portfolio, but enough that if I'm right about the company and wrong about waiting, I've participated. I participated. Okay. That's what I call heartbreak insurance. And that may ultimately be what I do in this case, okay? Um, it's not like a small IPO position, okay? Not because I've decided ₦525 per share is definitely a bargain, not because everybody else is buying, and certainly not because I think the share price must jump after the listing. And I've not made my final decision whether I'll do this heartbreak insurance thing, but I could do it. But because I genuinely find the business interesting enough that I may want some skin in the game while I continue observing and studying Then if the company lists and the price falls, goes down, and my analysis suggests the business is worth substantially more, wonderful. Or warm the bar. I can buy more at discount, you know, at better prices. If the price keeps jumping or runs away and I own just a little, and if my thesis, my investment thesis turns out to be completely wrong because you can't be 100% right every time, you don't need to be. Then in that case, my position will just be small. So this brings us to another principle that I think investors often overlook. Your opinion and your position size are 2 different decisions. I learned this early. You don't have to choose between I hate this company and I own zero of it, and I love this company, therefore 50% or 60% of my portfolio is there. No, that's not wise. There's a huge amount of space in between. So don't destroy a good portfolio just for one exciting IPO. This is especially important if you spent years building a diversified investment portfolio. Please don't suddenly dismantle it because Dangote Refinery is trending. I wouldn't. With Dangote Refinery, you're buying an individual company, so you're taking on some risk. Okay, it's company-specific risk, it's country risk, Nigeria risk, currency risk, commodity refining risk, execution risk, and potentially significant price volatility. There may be substantial upside as well. That's precisely why it's interesting. But that doesn't mean it deserves unlimited space in your portfolio, like 50% of your portfolio. The more uncertain the outcome, the more position sizing— how much you put in— allocation matters. One of the signs of maturity as an investor is realizing that you don't need to be absolutely right all the time, but you need to make sure that when you're wrong, You're still okay. We are okay. Okay, okay, okay. If you know, you know. As I often say in the Moneywise Doctor community, I'd rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong. I teach this all the time. So vaguely right than precisely wrong. Now there are some questions you should ask. So whether you're considering Dangote Refinery or another IPO 5 years from now, I'll leave you with 5 key questions I usually will ask. Number 1, do I really Do I understand the business? Not just hype from podcasts you're hearing. How does it actually make money? Do I understand that? Number 2, what am I paying? Not just the share price. What am I effectively paying for the company? Future cash flows and all that. Number 3, what could make me wrong? Okay. Debt, competition, currency, AI will wipe the company, regulation, management, execution. Think about that. Number 4, how does it fit my life? What's my time horizon? What currency will I eventually spend? Can I afford volatility? Do I need this money in 5 years or 10 years or 20 years? And then number 5, how big should my position be? That's the one people skip. You can have an intelligent investment idea and turn it into a stupid financial decision simply by just putting too much money in it. Okay, so I've invested in startups and I know that you can't just allocate a massive amount in startups. Okay, so important. So 20 years ago, I was a 21-year-old medical student Dangote Sugar came to the market at ₦18. That was my first IPO. I'd been investing already by then, but it was my first IPO. I bought some. 20 years later, I'm looking at another Dangote company. It's coming to the public market, except this time I have something I didn't have at 21. I have about 21 years of investing experience, roughly 20 plus. And that's the difference. I'm much less interested in asking, um, is this company going to be successful? That's not the question here. My question is, at this price, what return am I being offered for the risk I'm taking? Okay, so do I think Dangote Refinery could become one of the most important businesses in Africa? Absolutely. Why not? Would I like to own a part of it? Very possibly, yes. Am I convinced enough at ₦525 per share to put a large amount of money into the IPO, especially with the number of shares being sold? No, I'm not. So at the moment, I'm more inclined to wait for the secondary market, watch, learn, maybe a bit of heartbreak insurance, and buy when the combination of price and evidence makes sense to me. But like I said, to be totally honest, I may or may not buy a small amount at the IPO. I'm not, most likely not, but I may buy a little bit of heartbreak insurance. And if I do, I'll tell you and I'll share it in my Moneywise Dr community and my weekly newsletter as well. But whatever I decide, Don't let the noise make the decision for you. Not the headlines, not social media hype, not celebrities, not institutional investors, not me. Understand the business, understand the price, understand the risk, and make sure the investment actually deserves a place in your portfolio. Because ultimately, a great company doesn't automatically make a great investment, and a rising share price doesn't necessarily mean Your purchasing power has risen. Not really. Those are lessons I understand considerably better now, above 40, at 41, than I did when I was 21. And if you enjoy this kind of practical investing breakdown, subscribe to the Moneywise Doctor channel. What are you waiting for? It's totally free. I talk about investing, tax efficiency, pensions, and financial independence, particularly for doctors, without trying to make finance more complicated than it needs to be, and sharing practical experiences from my own journey too. And if you're a doctor who would like to understand where the gaps might be across your wider finances, you can complete the Moneywise Doctor MedScan, our financial health score AI. I've put the link below. It's so simple to do, takes 3 to 5 minutes. So I'm curious, what are you going to do with Dangote Refinery? Are you buying the IPO? Are you waiting for the secondary market? Or are you staying away altogether? I want to know. Tell me in the comments. And hey, if you found the video useful and you're thinking you want to learn more about how to take charge of your financial future, learn about investing tax efficiently and all of that, the video, the next video on the screen is one the algorithm thinks will be ideal for you. You can go ahead, click on it, watch it, and let me know what you think. Cheers. Bye-bye.