MTN Nigeria Plans N52Bn Recapitalisation

MTN Nigeria plans to issue two series of commercial papers worth N52.895bn, according to a corporate notice filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited on Thursday.

In the notice, the company said that Series 8 & 9 Commercial Paper notes would be under its N250bn Commercial Paper Issuance Programme.

The notice signed by Uto Ukpanah, company secretary, said, “The issuance is part of the company’s strategy to diversify its financing options with the funds being deployed towards short-term working capital and funding requirements,” with a promise to provide more details to the market later.

Recently, MTN Nigeria raised N125bn through the issuance of commercial papers series 6 & 7.

Although, the company said it sought to raise N100bn, the offer recorded 146 per cent subscription with N125bn raised across both series.

The series included a 181-day commercial paper at a yield of 13 per cent and a 265-day CP at a yield of 13.50 per cent with an issue date of August 23, 2023.

In its recently released financial results for the first nine months of 2023, MTN Nigeria said its N250bn commercial paper programme was issued in March and August 2023 and that N52bn was redeemed in the month of September 2023 with the remaining tranches maturing in November 2023 (N72bn) at 12.5 per cent, February 2024 (N52bn) at 13 per cent and May 2024 (N72bn) at 13.5 per cent.

In the period ended September 2023, MTN reported a 21.8 per cent growth in its revenue from N1.45tn in September 2022 to N1.77tn at the end of the same period in 2023.

Its net finance cost rose by 174.4 per cent to N375.95bn, and profit before tax decreased by 42 per cent to N232.46bn.

Also, the telco’s earnings per share decreased by 45.2 per cent to N7.06 kobo while profit after tax declined by 45.2 per cent to N147.36bn.

MTN’s mobile subscriber base reached a new high of 77.6 million users as it added approximately 2 million users in the nine months. 3.6 million active data users were added in the nine months as its total data traffic rose by 46.3 per cent, and data usage (GB per user) grew by 29.1 per cent.

On the side of its fintech business, MTN Nigeria said it was recovering from the slowdown in H1 as active wallets rose by 1.6 million to 3.6 million, with over 293,000 MoMo agents and 197,000 merchants.