Airtel Africa has announced that it will be listing on the Nigerian bourse on July 8th, Monday. Initially, it was scheduled to be listed on July 5th. According to the Nigerian Stock Exchange statement on July 5th, the planned secondary listing of Airtel Africa shares had to be postponed to ensure the listing requirements.It was also reported that manual allotment process of transferring the shares to new investors delayed the process. Nigeria is Airtel’s biggest market in Africa may be recalled that India’s Bharti Airtel last week offered shares in its African unit via a London IPO as scheduled while listing of 3.76 billion shares of Airtel Africa in Nigeria Bourse was rescheduled. Nigerian listing price of AirtelAfrica shares was set at 363 naira per share, via a book building process which valued the company at 1.364 trillion nairas ($4.44 billion).stated the authorities. Airtel Africa’s listing in Nigeria Bourse follows the listing of Africa’s biggest telecom giant MTN’s Nigerian unit in Lagos in May this year in a $6.5 billion float that lifted it as the second-largest stock on by market value. The local authorities stated that though Airtel shares registered in Britain may be moved from the London market to Nigeria subject to approval by London authorities and currency regulation in Nigeria, Airtel shares registered in Nigeria cannot be moved to London
Nigerian stocks have not been performing well reflecting the weak growth of the economy and the delay to appoint a cabinet by President Buhari, even after four months after winning the election. Local stocks plunged 6.8% this year. The situation was equally bad last year when it shed 17.8 %.
