Ellah Lakes PLC, a leading Agribusiness company, earlier today listed an additional 1.880 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
According to a statement signed by Elizabeth Ekpo, representative of the NSE’s Head of Listings Regulations Department, the additional 1.880 billion shares were issued to the shareholders of Telluria Limited which was recently acquired by Ellah Lakes Plc.
“Dealing Members are hereby notified that additional 1,880,000,000 ordinary shares of Ellah Lakes Plc (Ellah Lakes or the Company) were listed on the Daily Official List of The Nigerian Stock Exchange today, 17 June 2019.
“The additional shares listed arose from the 1,880,000,000 ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each issued to the shareholders of Telluria Limited, as consideration for the acquisition of the entire issued shares of Telluria Limited by Ellah Lakes.”
Backstory: Recall that late last week, Nairametrics had reported the acquisition of Telluria Limited by Ellah Lakes Plc. The hundred percent acquisition was carried out with the hope of enabling Ellah Lakes Plc to broaden its business by venturing into diverse fields such as oil palm cultivation, production, and processing as well as its derivative products. Prior to this time, the company had only focused solely on fish farming/processing.
Breakdown of the listing: In addition to Ellah Lakes‘ existing ordinary shares of 120 million, the newly listed shares of 1.88 billion bring the company’s total issued and fully paid up shares to 2 billion ordinary shares.
The deal is expected to return Ellah Lakes to the path of profitability after the company recorded a Loss After Tax of N10.788 million for the financial year ended 31st July 2018.
Details of Expansion Plans: According to Ellah Lake‘s Managing Director, Chuka Mordi, who spoke to CNBC Africa following the Facts Behind the Listing, the company has an aggressive growth target to meet in the next 18 to 24 months.
“We are quite certain we can meet these aggressive growth targets. We’ve bought into the growth story of agric business and agric sector in Nigeria. We are very much encouraged by the governments of Edo State, Delta State and their respective governors and CBN policies, which have been very useful in this particular sector we are in.
“We have a target of, over the next 18 months, 10,000 hectares. We intend to establish an oil mill and then go on to refining…so the plan is to go on from low-value end of crude palm oil to the high-value end of processed palm oil.”