Dangote puts off its London listing
Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, has again delayed plans to sell shares in his cement manufacturer on the London Stock Exchange, opting instead to focus on increasing exports and boosting the Nigerian company’s foreign exchange reserves.
Dangote Cement, the continent’s biggest producer of the building material, is not expected to attempt a UK initial public offering until at least 2023, said Temilade Aduroja, head of investor relations at the Lagos-based company.
“The London listing is not something which will happen in the short to medium term,” she said.
“We are focused on our export strategy and increasing our foreign currency revenue.”
Dangote, who has a net worth of more than $14bn (about R229bn), has long expressed his ambition for Dangote Cement to have a secondary London listing to diversify its ownership and gain access to cheaper funds on international markets.
Yet for one reason or another he has never managed to arrange this.
The controlling shareholder said in 2018 the listing would happen the following year, only for the company’s former chief financial officer, Brian Egan, to state that 2020 was more likely.
Dangote Cement, Nigeria’s biggest listed company by market value, took advantage of a drop in yields in the domestic debt markets to raise 100-billion naira (about R4.3bn) through commercial papers in May and April, the largest offering of its kind at the time.
The group said in July it was intending to export clinker to 15 countries in Central and West Africa in a bid to boost revenue and resolve a scarcity of foreign exchange in Nigeria.
The company is expected to see volume expansion in the third quarter following the easing of restrictions across the continent.
This easing “bodes well for margins as higher realised prices are expected in Nigeria and the pan-African region”, Sonia Baldeira, a senior industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a note earlier this month.