NSE Now to List Airtel Africa Plc on Tuesday

Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has officially said that the postponed Airtel Africa listing on its platform has been rescheduled for Tuesday, July 9th, 2019.

Ahead of its secondary listing on the NSE, the telecom firm, at the weekend, unveiled plans to distribute 80 percent of its free cash flow as dividend to shareholders.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the NSE said, “The Exchange is aware of various media reports stating that the postponed Airtel Africa listing on NSE is scheduled for Monday, July 8.

“Please be informed that the official date for the listing is Tuesday, July 9.”

The NSE had on Friday postponed the listing of Airtel’s shares barely two hours to the planned time.

The bourse announced the postponement of the listing, saying there were processes yet to be followed by the firm.

The NSE, in a statement on Friday, said, “The cross-border secondary listing of 3,758,151,504 ordinary shares of Airtel Africa Plc has been postponed from the scheduled date of Friday, July 5, 2019.

“This postponement was necessitated by the need to ensure that the company meets all the post NSE approval pre-requisites for listing on the NSE.”

However, the facts before the listing event held as planned at 11.00 a.m. on Friday.

On Thursday, the NSE said in a circular that it granted a waiver to the firm as it did not meet the minimum requirement of 300 shareholders as of the day the listing was approved by the National Council of the Exchange.

Mr Oscar Onyema, chief executive officer, NSE, said there were processes yet to be followed and papers yet to be signed by the firm.

He said, “This is a highly-regulated matter; there are back-end processes that need to be followed by the company.”

Analysts at Vetiva Capital Management said Airtel’s addition of approximately N1.36tn in market capitalisation to the NSE would lift the bourse to a market cap of over N14tn, as well as effectively create a new major sector represented on the Exchange, the telecommunications sector.