MTN may list on NSE next week

MTN

MTN Nigeria may list shares in Nigeria Stock Exchnage (NSE) next week, two sources familiar with the matter said yesterday.

Africa’s biggest carrier could go ahead with the placing on May 16, said the people, who craved anonymity.

”We don’t have a specific date, we are looking at some time before the end of this quarter,” Head, Corporate Relations at MTN Nigeria, Tobechukwu Okigbo, was quoted to have said by phone.

Meanwhile, to further clear the coast for the telco, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)  confimed its approval of the telco’s application to register its existing securities.

A statement by SEC Head of Corporate Communications, Mrs. Efe Ebelo, explained that the Acting Director General of SEC, Ms. Mary Uduk,  confirmed the approval.

“MTN sought to come to the market by way of an introduction and they wrote to the SEC last week requesting for approval to register its existing shares. That approval has now been granted.

“This is a further indication of the determination by the the SEC to work with companies that are interested in the capital market. We believe that this will also encourage other service providers to come to the market,” the statement read.

SEC received the application from the company last week to register their existing securities.

MTN Nigeria registered 20.35 billion ordinary shares with the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission this week. It plans to list around 20 percent of those on the bourse and they could trade at between N80 and N90, said one of the people. That would give the unit a market value of as much as N1.8 trillion ($5.1 billion), making it the second-biggest public firm in Africa’s main oil producer after Dangote Cement Plc. It will be the largest when measured by revenue.

MTN agreed to an initial public offering of its Nigeria business as part of the settlement of a reduced $1 billion fine in the country in 2016. The listing planned for next week is the first of two stages, with a selldown of MTN’s majority stake to take place at a later date.

The carrier appointed former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Lamido Sanusi, who’s now the Emir of Kano, to its board last week in preparation for the listing.

Source: Lucas Ajanaku, Moses Emorinken (The Nation News).

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