By Dipo Olowookere
The admission of Airtel Africa on the trading platform of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday, July 5, 2019, will go ahead as planned.
The exercise would have been stopped if authorities of the exchange had not given the telecom firm a waiver to list its shares on the nation’s bourse tomorrow.
At a pre-listing media briefing on Thursday afternoon, the management of Airtel Africa, which listed its shares on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) last week, said it would make available for trading a total of 39,227,968 ordinary shares at N363 per share.
A few days ago, Business Post reported that the admission of Airtel Africa on the NSE would boost the market capitalisation by N1.4 trillion, which the firm confirmed today at the press conference.
As part of the pre-listing rules, quoted companies are required to have at least 300 institutional investors, but Airtel Africa was unable to get these numbers.
Before its London listing last week, Airtel Africa conducted an IPO through book building, which was restricted to institutional investors and high net worth individuals, who were expected to have at least N300 million in their ‘purse.’
It was learned that during this exercise, Airtel Africa was unable to gather the 300 institutional investors required, but only managed 130 institutional and high net worth investors, less than 50 percent of the numbers for its listing.
Business Post reports that the NSE has allowed the company to go ahead with its listing tomorrow, but was told to make efforts to meet up after the listing.
Business Post reports that Airtel Africa, which listed on the LSE last Friday at 80 pence, closed at the market at 72.40 pence today, appreciating by 0.42 percent.
