MTN Uganda to sell a fifth of its stake

• MTN Uganda, a South African MTN Group subsidiary, has announced that it intends to sell a fifth of its stake to Kenyan and other East African investors when it floats its initial public offer (IPO) on the Kampala bourse.
•  The telecom revealed that it had received regulatory approvals to list 20 percent of its shareholding.
•  The details will be published in its prospectus to be released on October 11.

MTN Uganda, a South African MTN Group subsidiary,  has announced that it intends to sell a fifth of its stake to Kenyan and other East African investors when it floats its initial public offer (IPO) on the Kampala bourse. The telecom revealed that it had received regulatory approvals to list 20 percent of its shareholding. The details will be published in its prospectus to be released on October 11.

The stake sale will be restricted to citizens of the East African Community trading bloc, Ugandan regulators had clarified. The bloc includes Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan, Kenya and Uganda. According to Uganda’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA) Chief Executive Keith Kalyegira, the IPO is expected to raise about $1.2 billion and boost the number of retail investors at the Uganda Securities Exchange from about 40,000 to 200,000 investors. The listing is expected to make MTN Uganda the second publicly traded telecom in EAC after Safaricom’s IPO on the Nairobi Securities Exchange in 2008.

MTN Uganda in a statement said that it will be the largest IPO on the Ugandan market and will be delivered primarily through a digital paperless/ green platform. The company added that the offer and listing was in line with MTN Group’s localisation plans.

The Ugandan government had set the local listing as a precondition for the license renewal of telecoms. MTN Uganda, which started operating in the country in 1998 has 15 million subscribers. Its operating license was renewed for 12 years in February last year after paying $100 million with the local listing requirement. MTN Group Ltd of South Africa owns more than 90 percent of MTN Uganda’s shares, while a Ugandan businessman holds less than five percent shares.

With the country’s 42 million people young population, Uganda’s telecoms and data market is seen as potentially lucrative. Mobile penetration in Uganda grew from 0.27 percent in 1998 to 67 percent as of March 2021.