Investors in MTN Public Offer gain N35 billion in 6 months

Investors in MTN’s Public Offer for Sale conducted in December 2021 have gained an estimated N35 billion since the offer closed last year.

The company listed its public offer price at about N169/share when it made the offer public in December attracting over 126,000 Nigerians.

Checks by Nirametrics revealed that MTN Nigeria closed its last trading day (Friday, June 24, 2022) at N230.00 per share and N4.683 trillion in market capitalization on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NGX). 

• This indicates the share price has gained an impressive N61 per share since then or an estimated N35 billion based on 575 million shares it sold.
• MTN began the year with a share price of N197.00 and has since gained 16.8% on that price valuation.

In total shares of the stock as gained a whopping N185 billion or 4.12% in one week.

What’s driving the gains?

The market sentiment for the segment which comprises two telecoms firms-MTN Nigeria Plc and Airtel Africa Plc has remained resilient in the face of the pandemic.

• Telecom companies are currently taking advantage of the remote working which most companies have adopted following the COVID-19 pandemic to rake in gains from data subscriptions and voice calls.
• Most workers are leveraging the Internet for online education, teleworking, gaming and entertainment and there has been a rise in Internet traffic recorded by the Internet exchange point. 

Internet traffic has also increased for a lot of companies and their employees after they introduced the work-from-home policy a week before the government-imposed lockdown. 

What stakeholders are saying 

• In the post COVID-19 era, telcos are expected to perform well as the world will be more connected and businesses better prepared for such calamities, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. 
• Emma Mohr-McClune Technology Service Director at GlobalData, says: “Coming out of COVID-19, millions of users worldwide will be more connected and more familiar with digital tools. 
• “Telco networks will have gained first-hand experience in dynamic network traffic management while businesses and their telco partners will have a better understanding of the challenges of homeworking. 
• “The need for robotic health workers, biometric virus predictors and AI health management tools will provide new use cases and investment justification for 5G. 
• “The situation will provide a shot in the arm for telco innovation around AI and machine learning and a catalyst for app and solution innovation ecosystems.” 

What you should know 

• MTN Nigeria Communications Plc, established in February 2001, is the Nigerian subsidiary of the MTN Group – a telecommunications group operating in 22 countries across Africa and the Middle East. Since inception, MTN Nigeria has led the growth of the telecom industry to become the biggest mobile operator in the whole of West Africa. 
• Over the past three months (Mar 23 – Jun 24, 2022). MTNN has traded a total volume of 191 million shares in 21,340 deal valued at N 43.7 billion, with an average of 3.03 million traded shares per session. A volume high of 22.8 million was achieved on April 13th, and a low of 149,497 on April 25th, for the same period.