Investors seem to be bullish on Guinness Nigeria as the company’s rights issue was over subscribed by 16%. Two shareholders applied for over 50 million shares. A total of 684,494,631 ordinary shares of 50 kobo each were offered to existing shareholders in the ratio of five new ordinary shares for every eleven ordinary shares held by shareholders whose names appeared on the register of members of the Company at the close of business on Wednesday, 15 March, 2017.
The shares were issued at N58. Stanbic IBTC Capital Limited was the issuing house to the offer which opened on Monday 24th July, 2017 and closed on Wednesday 30th August, 2017.
What will Guinness Nigeria will use the money for ?
Proceeds from the rights issue will be used to pay down dollar denominated loans which it took from Diageo its parent company. Nigeria suffered an FX crisis last year, which lead the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to tighten foreign exchange supply. A sharp depreciation of the Naira last year lead to Guinness making a full year loss of N1.8 billion in 2016.
Guinness Nigeria shares closed flat at N98.50 in Thursday’s trading session on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, up 18.60% year to date. Full year 2017 results show the company has bounced back to profit as it made a profit before tax of N2.6 billion, and declared a dividend of %0 kobo per share.
