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· Nigeria’s biggest public company Dangote Cement Plc would pay shareholders N16 for every share held in the company for the 2020 financial year
· This would work out to a total dividend payout of N272.648 billion, according to a note submitted by the company to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) recently
· Last year, the company had repurchased 10% of its outstanding shares to shore up its share price
· The buyback of the shares had helped mostly the company’s promoters, directors and insiders since the free float shares, which were ploughed back were not held by the promoters or directors but by the general public
Nigeria’s biggest public company Dangote Cement Plc would pay shareholders N16 for every share held in the company for the 2020 financial year. This would work out to a total dividend payout of N272.648 billion, according to a note submitted by the company to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) recently.
The Lagos based cement major has been paying the same dividend to shareholders for the last three years, despite a sharp decline in profit by-almost by 50 per cent. In absolute terms, the profit decelerated from N 390.215 billion to N200.521 billion in 2019. The reason was a sharp rise in operating cost. To pay a dividend equivalent to the previous years in 2019, the company had to commit the entire profit for last year, besides mobilizing N72 billion from other sources.
Last year, the company had repurchased 10% of its outstanding shares to shore up its share price. Stock market sources point out that currently the share prices of the cement major are undervalued. The buyback of the shares had helped mostly the company’s promoters, directors and insiders since the free float shares, which were ploughed back were not held by the promoters or directors but by the general public. The offerings to the public was only 13.8 per cent of Dangote Cement’s entire shares
The cement majors’ sales in nine months to September 2020 was N761.444 billion and profit N208.685 billion, which compares with the N679.791 billion revenue and N154.350 billion profit declared respectively for the corresponding period of 2019. This had raised hopes of improved earnings for the full-year. It is also significant to note that the Nigerian federal government earlier exempted Dangote Cement from land border closure in the third quarter of last year. That enabled the company to export its products across the country’s land borders especially to Niger and Togo.
