IPOs in Uzbekistan: how to take part on UZSE

A public offering is the moment a company, or one of its shareholders, sells shares to anyone who wants to buy them. In Uzbekistan these offerings take place on the Republican Stock Exchange «Toshkent» (UZSE), and in recent years several well-known companies have used them. This guide explains the rules, the steps a private investor goes through and what the exchange's own records show about recent offerings.

IPO, SPO and public offerings

UZSE's regulation on its quotation list uses two terms (regulation on the quotation list, as of 26 September 2026):

• Initial public offering (IPO): a joint-stock company offers additional shares to an unlimited number of investors on the stock exchange. The money goes to the company.
• Secondary public offering (SPO): a shareholder sells shares it already owns to an unlimited number of investors on the exchange. The money goes to the selling shareholder, which in Uzbekistan is often the state.

The exchange lists both, along with other public offerings, in one table on its IPO / SPO / PO page.

What the law requires

The Law on the securities market sets the basic rules for placing securities (lex.uz, article 17, as of 26 September 2026):

• A placement can be private (a closed subscription among a known, limited group of investors, without advertising) or public (an open subscription among an unlimited number of investors, with advertising).
• An open subscription for shares is held only on organised securities trading, which in practice means the exchange.
• A public placement can start no earlier than two weeks after the state registration of the issue has been disclosed.
• The issuer, and any bank or investment intermediary placing the shares for it, must let investors read the prospectus and the placement terms before they buy.
• The placement must finish within the period set in the issue decision, which may not exceed one year from state registration.
• Book-entry securities count as placed once they are fully paid and transferred to the buyers' depo accounts.

The law also reminds every investor that choosing securities, and the consequences of that choice, is the investor's own risk (article 61).

What recent offerings looked like

UZSE's table records, for each offering, the subscription dates, the offering price, the deposit requirement, the number of shares offered, the number subscribed and the listing date. A few entries, as published on uzse.uz (as of 26 September 2026):

• National Investment Fund of Uzbekistan (UzNIF): subscription from 30 April to 12 May 2026, offering price 4.41 UZS, 47,943,008,287 shares offered and the same number subscribed, listed on 18 May 2026.
• Uzbek Commodity Exchange (O'zRTXB): subscription from 27 September to 8 November 2024, offering price 12,900 UZS, 3,326,031 shares offered and subscribed, listed on 13 November 2024.
• Uzbektelecom (O'zbektelekom): subscription from 12 to 15 December 2023, offering price 6,000 UZS, 5,542,046 shares offered and subscribed.
• UzAuto Motors: subscription from 22 December 2022 to 15 February 2023, offering price 72,500 UZS, 2,700,000 shares offered and 784,703 subscribed, listed on 20 February 2023.
• Navoiy savdo kompleksi: offered 400,000 shares at 2,615.76 UZS several times between 2021 and 2024, with zero shares subscribed each time.

Every one of these entries shows a deposit requirement of 100%: subscribers put up the full amount of money for the shares they apply for.

Two lessons stand out. First, demand varies widely: some offerings were fully subscribed, UzAuto Motors placed under a third of what it offered, and some found no buyers at all. Second, the offering price is not a floor. On 25 September 2026, UZSE recorded a last price of 6.55 UZS for UzNIF's shares (ticker UZNF), above the 4.41 UZS offering price, and 56,950 UZS for UzAuto Motors (UZMT), below its 72,500 UZS offering price (UZNF and UZMT on uzse.uz). These are simple price comparisons that ignore dividends and any corporate actions, and past results say nothing about future offerings.

How a private investor takes part, step by step

The exact procedure is set in each offering's terms, and your broker will tell you what it needs. The general path looks like this:

1. Have a brokerage account with a UZSE member. Every order on the exchange goes through a member firm, and your shares are recorded on a depo account. If you do not have one yet, read how to open a brokerage account and depo accounts and the central depository.
2. Read the prospectus and the offering terms. Check the price, the minimum and maximum application, the subscription dates, how shares are allocated if demand exceeds supply and when trading starts. Issuers publish their disclosures on openinfo.uz.
3. Fund your brokerage account in time. With a 100% deposit requirement, the full amount has to be available when your application is placed.
4. Submit your application through your broker during the subscription period. Late applications are not accepted.
5. Wait for allocation. If the offering is oversubscribed, you may receive fewer shares than you applied for, and the unused money is returned under the offering terms.
6. See the shares on your depo account and, from the listing date, trade them like any other listed share.

A worked example

The numbers are illustrative. Suppose an offering is priced at 5,000 UZS per share and you apply for 2,000 shares. You need 10,000,000 UZS in your brokerage account, plus your broker's commission. If demand is twice the number of shares offered and the terms allocate in proportion to applications, you might receive 1,000 shares (5,000,000 UZS) and get the other 5,000,000 UZS back. Allocation rules differ between offerings, so always check the terms instead of assuming this method.

Questions to ask before you subscribe

• Is it an IPO or an SPO? New shares raise money for the company. Existing shares sold by a shareholder do not.
• What happens to the free float? A large offering can greatly increase the number of freely traded shares. Market capitalisation and free float explains the concept.
• How will the shares trade afterwards? After listing, a share can be liquid or very thin. See liquidity risk and thinly traded stocks.
• Can you afford to have the money tied up? Between the application and listing, your money is committed and cannot be used elsewhere.

After listing, each share has a public page on Finmind, such as UZNF, with its latest stored trade and a year of daily closes.

This article is for education only and is not investment advice. Investing in securities involves risk, including the loss of money you invest.