Nigeria’s crude producer, Oando Plc, said it is hopeful that 2019 will be a good year as it targets increased output.
This is coming as the company continues to offset its $2.5 billion debt, 90% of which is expected to be paid by the end of September 2019.
The company’s CEO, Wale Tinubu, disclosed this recently in Lagos during an interview with Bloomberg. He specifically gave insight into the company’s development plans, saying that “we have purchased enough reserves and our job should really be to exploit those reserves.”
Paying off debts had its toll…
Tinubu said that Oando Plc had dedicated resources to paying off the $2.5 billion debt, which was incurred back in 2014 when the company acquired some oil and gas assets from ConocoPhillips, a US-based company.
Unfortunately, the focus on debt payment impeded the company’s growth, especially in 2016 when it declared a loss after tax of N3.9 billion.
Shareholders may smile again
As the company makes efforts to reposition its business for growth, its shareholders (who have not receive dividends in recent times) may have reasons to smile again.
Oando is currently focusing on more profitable areas while taking advantage of the recovering global oil prices to ensure growth. For instance, the CEO said they are reopening hitherto unutilised oil fields, even as they steadily increase the number of rigs.
The company has about 450 million barrels of untapped crude reserves which were proceeds from the 2014 ConocoPhillips acquisition. These reserves will be explored to increase revenue for the company.
“We are focused on developing that side of our business, which is really to export Nigerian crude and bring in products wholesale.” – Tinubu
In the meantime, the company has continued to show signs of recovery from its recent financial problems. As we reported, its 2018 half year report recorded an 11% increase in turnover with N297.3 billion compared to N267 billion reported in 2017. Profit after tax increased by 86%, from N4.6 billion in 2017 to N8.5 billion in 2018.
Founded in 1956, Oando Plc is one of the biggest operators in the upstream sector of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. Its shares closed at N5.00 during today’s trading on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
The docile and incompetent Oando Plc management led by Wale Tinubu has no better explanation to give for the shameless downfall and dismal performance of the “Oando Plc Tinubu family company” since 2014, to date. The Tinubus’ have fed recklessly and disproportionately fat on the sweat of shareholders who have lost their life savings to keep the company in waiting until September, 2019, when Wale and his fellow “dreamers promise to return to profitability”, perhaps!.
The plight of Oando Plc shareholders who have lost their life investments due to the gross mismanagement of the company is a watershed of how pretenders parading themselves as “top managers” of big corporations are unfit and ill-equipped to put peoples destiny in their corrupt hands. Oando Plc is now a “poisoned chalice” and only rewarding to the mutually exclusive benefits of the sprawling empire of the Wale Tinubus’ of this world.
Whilst shareholders of the other oil companies reap the benefits of well run and well managed profit outfits; the managers of Oando Plc family business engage in zero-sum primitive accumulation of “raw wealth” that “oil” the Wale Tinubu family extraordinary and their proxies year in, year out. Miserable shareholders only lament their long woes and losses with divine consolation and subdued silence. Shareholders invested so much in Oando Plc and have nothing to reap except yearly long and pathetic stories of “coming years (2019) will be better”.
This is man’s inhumanity to man. Showing off Oando Plc state of the art HQ in Victoria Island to the world is living in a fools paradise where the ostrich buries it’s head in the sand while exposing the main body to predictors. We have been fooled enough over the years believing Oando Plc “prosperity” which never came, which in actual fact gets worse and worse. To surmise, Wale Tunubu and his reckless and incompetent management team cannot again, fool all of the people, all of the time. This is shameful display of arrogance, impunity and massacre. We have lost all we invested in Oando Plc to Wale Tunubu and his musketeers!
Your comment has been duly noted, Mr Ukwuegbu.
Thank you very much.
A company of Oando’s size cannot and should not be managed with “Owambe” mentality. This is the way other multinational companies in Nigeria were being managed before the principals sent the Nigerian CEO/MDs packing for managing (actually damaging)them to ruination -there are numerous examples. And you will notice that most multinational companies in Nigeria now have expatriate MDs. There is something wrong with the thought processes of Nigerians that just cannot manage big money.And so, Oando will do good by looking for an expatriate MD/CEO if it desires to get out of the woods.