Dangote Cement Plc has released its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025, reporting a pre-tax profit of N311.974 billion, representing an 87.48% year-on-year (YoY) growth compared to N166.404 billion recorded in Q1 2024.
The company also posted a profit after tax of N209.245 billion, up 85.71% YoY, from N112.674 billion reported in the same period last year.
Driving this strong bottom-line performance was an impressive revenue of N994.659 billion, marking a 21.69% YoY increase from the prior year.
Key highlights (Q1 2025 v. Q1 2024):
- Revenue: N994.659 billion +21.69% YoY
- Cost of sales: N407.265 billion +2.29% YoY
- Gross profit: N587.394 billion +40.13% YoY
- Administrative expenses: N51.844 billion +13.86% YoY
- Selling and distribution expenses: N153.636 billion +5.77% YoY
- Operating profit: N397.419 billion +55.67% YoY
- Finance cost: N129.376 billion +4.99% YoY
- Basic EPS: N12.29 +83.98% YoY
- Cash and cash equivalent: N417.663 billion -7.15%.
- Total assets: N6.445 trillion +0.66%
Quick Analysis:
Dangote Cement’s impressive bottom-line performance in Q1 2025 was driven by strong revenue growth, supported by its solid market share.
- The company’s production capacity remained at 52 million metric tons, though production volume declined by 7.41% YoY to 6.547 million tons, while sales volume fell by 6.72% to 6.569 million tons.
- Revenue from the Nigerian segment rose significantly to N696.042 billion, increasing its contribution to group revenue from 55.41% in Q1 2024 to 69.98% in Q1 2025.
- Conversely, Pan African revenue dropped by 15.37% YoY to N322.653 billion, reducing its share of group revenue to 32.44%.
- On the cost side, fuel and power expenses, amounting to N177.193 billion, remained a key component of cost of sales.
However, cost of sales grew slower than revenue, which helped boost both gross profit and gross profit margin, now standing at 59%, up by 15 percentage points from Q1 2024.
Similarly, a moderate increase in overheads (up 7.7%) supported growth in operating profit, with the operating profit margin improving to 39.96%, compared to 31.23% in Q1 2024, a rise of 27.92%.
Haulage expenses continued to weigh heavily, accounting for over 60% of the N205.480 billion in administrative, selling, and distribution costs.
Finance costs rose only slightly, thanks to a significant drop in foreign exchange losses, from N63.765 billion in Q1 2024 to N17.472 billion. However, gross interest expenses remained high at N110.302 billion.
Balance sheet highlights
Dangote Cement’s total assets, everything the company owns, increased slightly to N6.445 trillion, showing a modest 0.66% growth.
At the same time, shareholders’ funds (the value belonging to owners of the business) grew even faster than total assets.
This helped the company reduce its leverage ratio; a measure of how much debt it uses compared to equity, from 2.91x at the end of 2024 to 2.71x at the end of Q1 2025.
In simple terms, for every N1 of shareholders’ money, Dangote Cement now uses N2.71 in total assets, down from N2.91. This means the company is becoming slightly less dependent on borrowed money, which is a sign of improved financial strength.
Share price performance
In 2024, the stock returned a YtD gain of 49.67%.
As of Friday, April 25, 2025, the share price closed at N432, marking a 10% drop from its previous close of N480, and resulting in a YtD loss of 9.77% in 2025.
The company has declared a dividend of N30 per share, payable on June 23, 2025, offering investors a dividend yield of 6.94%.
