Airtel Africa, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Nigeria, is now the most capitalized company listed on the Nigerian stock exchange, surpassing Dangote Cement, the cement producing giant owned by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, for the 13th year in a role.

Dangote share price on Thursday’s trading session, fell by 8.53% from its 52-week high of ₦284.90 to close the trading session at ₦260.60, on profit-taking by investors. This saw Dangote’s market capitalization fall by ₦414.1 billion, from ₦4.86 trillion to ₦4.44 trillion.

In 2022, Airtel’s share price has been having an impressive performance. It started the year trading ₦955 per share to currently trade ₦1,271, after gaining 10% during Wednesday’s trading session. This means that airtel’s share price in 2022 has grown by approximately 33.1% so far, for the year.

What You Should Know

Airtel Nigeria has been notably expanding its business beyond just the offerings of telecommunications services. Last year, the telco giant got an approval-in-principle to launch its payment service arm in Nigeria, known as SMARTCASH Payment Service Bank Limited.

Asides from this, it also announced last year that its subsidiary, Airtel Mobile Commerce Nigeria Limited, was granted approval in principle by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to operate as a super-agent in Nigeria.

Although these are signs of an evolving business, another factor that may have caused the rally could also be the fact that after announcing the completion of the minority share buyback in December 2021, Airtel Africa now owns 99.96% of the total shares outstanding. This means a share supply shock can be easily triggered with only a few stocks in circulation.

Dangote Cement has also been busy in 2022. Its share price has grown by 1.40% from ₦257 at the start of the year, to currently stand at ₦260.60. Dangote underwent the second trench of its share buyback where a total of 126,748,153 shares, representing 0.74% of the company’s issued shares were bought back from the open market, purchased for a total of ₦35.1 billion, at an average price of ₦276.89.

Another reason for the drop seen yesterday could be investors reacting to the company’s request for a waiver, to not to file its Fourth Quarter Unaudited Returns within thirty days of its period end, but to file its Annual Audited Financial Statements within sixty days of its year-end.

Although this is within the rights of the company, historically, the stock exchange has always reacted negatively to late filings of audited reports.

Conclusion

In today’s trading session so far, Dangote Cement remains unchanged at ₦260.60 and Airtel is currently trading ₦1,398, up 9.99%, the maximum price the share price can gain in today’s trading session.

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