Companies
Deal: ToLet.com.ng acquires Jumia House Nigeria, now Property Pro
This is an official press release of the acquisition of Jumia House by ToLet.com.ng.
Get the back story here
Friday 10 October 2017. Lagos, Nigeria. ToLet.com.ng, Nigeria’s leading online property classifieds portal, has in conjunction with their existing investors, Frontier Digital Ventures, acquired Jumia House Nigeria, a competing property portal, for an undisclosed sum. ToLet.com.ng will now merge the two platforms over the coming months, under the new name of PropertyPro.ng, creating Nigeria’s Number 1 property listings market leader in the online Property classifieds space, with 65% share of the Nigerian online real estate market.
ToLet.com.ng currently has around 60,000 listings on its platform, whilst Jumia House Nigeria has around 22,000, the vast majority of which are property listings for sale. In 2016, the company secured Series A investment of $1.2m, led by Frontier Digital Ventures [FDV], to expand its operations. Today’s announcement also sees FDV strengthening its portfolio in Angola and Ghana.
The Brainchild of Fikayo Ogundipe, Sulaiman Balogun, Dapo Eludire and Seyi Ayeni, ToLet.com.ng launched in 2013 as an online estate agency, but pivoted in January 2017 to become a property classifieds platform and has since grown from 150 to 10,000 agents. The company has recorded 15% m-o-m growth across all key metrics, including number of listings, traffic and subscribing agents and the 60-strong team now works with thousands of businesses across all 36 States in Nigeria to empower real estate agents with technology back-end tools that are helping to grow their businesses, manage leads and close deals.
Fikayo Ogundipe, CEO and Co Founder of ToLet.com.ng says, “The acquisition of Jumia House Nigeria has placed us in prime position to better serve the growing real estate market in the country. Our combined businesses, ToLet.com.ng and Jumia House Nigeria, have the scale and the resources to transform the online property sector for the benefit of property developers, real estate agents and property seekers alike. As we transition to PropertyPro, consolidating listings from ToLet.com.ng and Jumia House Nigeria, there is a brilliant opportunity to ensure Nigeria’s fluid and vibrant property market is underpinned by a robust, innovative technology. which PropertyPro.ng promises to offer.”
Sulaiman Balogun, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer adds, “Today’s announcement signifies a maturing in the online property classifieds market for Africa. We are now working with an entire generation who are now accustomed to heading online as a first port of call for rental or purchase of properties . We are on a steep growth trajectory, and are now in the very best position, with this acquisition, to deliver a world class property search service. We want PropertyPro.ng to be the first website Nigerians think of when they are looking to research, buy or rent a property, On the other hand, Agents on our platform will now be to reach more potential buyers, investors and tenants than any other portal in the country.” ”We want our agents to leave the marketing to us, so that they can focus on closing more sales. Delivery of exceptional service, quality leads and marketing solutions that help drive sales for Agents remains a top priority.
Over the last decade, the Nigerian real estate industry has experienced significant growth, and has risen to become the 5th biggest contributor to the GDP of Africa’s largest economy. Despite a recession, Nigeria’s property market high supply-demand gap fuelled by a 17 million affordable housing deficit has raised property sale and rental prices, with Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, having one of the world’s buoyant property markets and among the highest in the world, for achievable rents at more than US$85/m2 per month.
Companies
COVID-19, VAT, FX scarcity adversely impacted our operations in 2020 – Nigerian Breweries boss says
NB Plc’s operations in 2020 were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, VAT increase and FX devaluation.
The management of Nigeria’s leading brewer, Nigerian Breweries Plc has revealed that its operations in 2020 were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, VAT increase, FX devaluation and scarcity of foreign exchange.
This statement was made by the Managing Director of Nigerian Breweries, Mr Jordi Borrut Bel, at the company’s pre-AGM media briefing for the financial year-end 2020, which held in Lagos this week.
He noted that the increase in the brewer’s cost in 2020 was due to the COVID-19 pandemic which disrupted the company’s operations, as well as the increase in VAT, devaluation and FX scarcity which has put pressure on input cost.
READ: Alcoholic beverage makers on NSE lose a total N27.7 billion in a single day
The Nigerian Breweries boss explained further that the increase in cost could not be fully attributed to currency devaluation and foreign exchange scarcity.
He explained that the increase in costs of goods sold, as reported in its audited financial results, could also be linked to the increase in the volume of goods sold, as the company’s sales volume in 2020 increased by almost the same percentage as the cost of goods sold.
To deal with this challenge going forward, he revealed that the company is focused on the supply chain, and will continue to seek out ways to mitigate any of the price increases coming from FX scarcity.
READ: Brewery sector: A quarter to forget
The company’s profitability in question?
An analysis of the company’s result revealed that despite the 4.3% increase in net revenue from N323.00 billion recorded in 2019, to a total of N337.01 billion in 2020, the company’s profit declined significantly by 53.3% to N7.53 billion.
Speaking on this, Jordi Borrut in his statement at the press briefing noted that the brewer’s business performance in 2020 was quite impressive especially in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession. Despite these challenges, the company maintained a strong and healthy balance sheet.
“There was a slight reduction in profitability but compared to the previous year, the business witnessed an improved growth in revenue. The significance of this is that the business became more stable and healthier,” he said.
READ: Nigeria’s triangular beer war on the rise with the arrival of Budweiser
What you should know
- Nigerian breweries, being the largest brewer in the country, maintained its stance in terms of generating profits year-on-year. The company emerged as the only brewer to record a profit of N7.37 billion from its operations in 2020, 54.3% lower than 2019 figures (N16.1 billion).
- From this, the leading brewer was able to pay shareholders a total dividend of N7.5 billion, translating to a dividend of 94 kobos per share – a dividend payout in which exceeds 100%.
- While Guinness and International Breweries made a loss of N12.6 billion and N24.9 billion respectively, this reality impacted their ability to pay their shareholders dividends in 2020.
Business News
Highest paid Nigerian bank MD/CEOs of 2020
Bank MD/CEOs in Nigeria earned a combined N1.5 billion in salaries in 2020.
The banking sector, especially commercial banks, is one of the most profitable sectors of the Nigerian Economy churning out profits of close to a trillion in 2020 alone. They are also one of the highest employers of labours in the country employing over 93,000 Nigerians.
Sitting at the helm of affairs is the Chief Executive/Managing Director, the highest-ranking executive in the organization saddled with the responsibility of making the best corporate decisions, oversight of the execution of the organisation’s corporate strategies and most importantly increasing the shareholders’ return. The buck basically stops on their table.
Thus, these enormous responsibilities also come with a considerable executive compensation for their service making them ostensibly the highest-ranking staff of the bank.
READ: Jim Ovia: From a clerk to founder of Nigeria’s most profitable bank
In typical Nairametrics fashion, we bring to you a list of the highest-ranking bank CEOs for 2020 based on their executive compensation (exec comps). The bank MD/CEOs under our review earned over N1.5 billion in salaries in 2020.
The data was sourced from the published audited accounts of the bank and verified by Nairametrics Research.
