By Dipo Olowookere
The share buy-back programme proposed by the board of Dangote Cement Plc has been approved by shareholders of the company. The scheme was authorised at an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) held in Lagos on Wednesday.
The board is planning to repurchase shares of the cement firm at the stock market. About 10 percent or 1.7 billion units of the company’s entire 17.04 billion issued and fully paid-up ordinary shares of 50 kobo each are to be mopped up from the market using funds from retained earnings of over N700 billion as at the third quarter of 2019.
According to the scheme, these equities will be bought back within 12 months and no director of the company would be allowed to participate, while the purchase price will be at the discretion of the board.
At the meeting yesterday, some shareholders of Dangote Cement commended the board for this initiative, saying it will enhance the share value and juicier returns on investment.
President of Authentic Nigerian Shareholders Association, Mr Mohammed Audu, expressed hope that the money realized from the ‘share buy-back’ by the shareholders will be used for investment purposes.
“The share buy-back will ensure that the value of our share will go up and we are also sure of getting better dividends. So, as you can see, all the shareholders here today voted unanimously in support of the motion. We voted for it and also thank Aliko Dangote for making us richer,” Mr Audu said.
on his part, National Coordinator Emeritus of the Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Sir Sunny Nwosu, said, “As shareholders, we have been clamouring for share buy-back for so many years and today, Aliko Dangote has given us hope.”
According to him, the repurchase of share shares from the stock market “is very good as against the practice of share deconstruction that is being practiced by some Nigerian companies which never gives back anything positive to the shareholders.”
“We are indeed very happy with this (share buy-back) and we are also quite sure that with this that you have done today, you have proved yourself to be the best chairman of all the corporate companies in Nigeria,” he said, emphasising that, “We know that this arrangement will lead to share price increase and more dividends for the shareholders.”
Adedapo Adesanya