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Three months after listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), MTN Nigeria Communications Plc has emerged Nigeria’s largest listed company on the bourse, thanks to its imminent inclusion into the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Frontier Markets Index.
The telecommunications company’s stock sustained its bullish trend Monday at the NSE with a 2.74 percent gain to close at N138.70 per share, adding N75.3 billion to investors’ wealth and bringing the firm’s market value to N2.82 trillion ($7.72 billion).
Similarly, shares of Dangote Cement, Nigeria’s biggest cement producer formerly occupying the top spot, gained 0.30 percent to settle at N164.50 per share at the close of business. However, the positive performance, which brought the cement giant’s market capitalisation to N2.80 trillion ($7.67 billion), was not enough to keep the company at the top position.
“It’s an interesting race to watch out for,” Gbolahan Ologunro, an equity research analyst at Lagos-based investment house, CSL Stockbrokers Limited, told BusinessDay. “Unlike what we had in the past when the most capitalised stock was held by Dangote Cement, both stocks would now rotate the title.”
With MTN’s latest share price increase, the stock stood as the most valuable company on the NSE with over N20 billion worth of value to beat its closest competitor.
MTN is Nigeria’s largest telecoms firm by market share. The firm’s share price has continued to rally in the days leading to August 27 ahead of its official inclusion on the MSCI index to join 9 of the existing Nigerian largest and most liquid companies on the index including, Dangote Cement, Guaranty Trust Bank, Nestle, Zenith Bank, Nigerian Breweries, Stanbic IBTC Holdings, Seplat, First Bank of Nigeria Holdings, and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated.
The company listed 20.35 million existing shares at N99 by introduction at the NSE on May 16, 2019, in a move that temporarily returned the market to the positive territory having booked its longest losing streak in almost a year. Since then, MTN has gained as much as 54.11 percent in value.
MTN’s stock was the toast of investors at Monday’s trading session as more than 12.37 million units of shares valued at N1.7 billion were transacted before the sounding of the closing gong, making the telecoms company the most traded stock by value.
Besides the telco’s forthcoming inclusion into the MSCI Index, the company rewarded its shareholders with an interim dividend of N2.95 per share for the half-year period ended June 2019.
This came after a 34.79 percent growth in after-tax profit to N98.9 billion for the period on a year-on-year basis. Revenue rose by 12.1 percent from the same period in 2018 to N566.9 billion driven by a more robust customer base and increases in voice, data, Fintech, and digital revenue.
Voice revenue grew by 11.4 percent from the previous period in 2018; Data revenue surged 31.7 percent; fintech revenue, 21.2 percent; while digital revenue increased by 64.5 percent.
“We added 3.3 million customers to our network, increasing our subscriber base to 61.5 million,” Ferdi Moolman, MTN Nigeria CEO, stated while reacting to the firm’s half-year financial performance.
MTN Nigeria is also the country’s biggest listed company by revenue.
OLUWASEGUN OLAKOYENIKAN
