By Adedapo Adesanya
Managing Director of NIPCO Plc, Mr Sanjay Teotia, has hinted that the leading downstream oil company in Nigeria will consider “venturing into [Liquefied Petroleum Gas] LPG production [in the near future] against the background of the nation’s richness in natural gas.”
Mr Teotia made this disclosure at the 15th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the energy firm held in the nation’s capital, Abuja, on Wednesday, September 25, 2019.
Business Post reports that the MD, while addressing shareholders at the gathering, explained that the reason for this is to “diversify and grow our streams of income through the expansion of the company’s oil and gas business would gain more momentum,” assuring investors that they would “continue to smile with good returns on their investment year in year out.”
According to him, “Our growth plans for the future would be hinged on focused implementation of our strategic intent of exceeding customer’s expectations in all our line of businesses.
He said, “Currently in LPG storage space, NIPCO does not only possess the largest capacity but also are the most active as well as the supplier of choice for LPG,” thanking shareholders for their “growing faith in the management over the years.”
Mr Teotia said he has been able to firm up the administration in his second successive year in the leadership of the company, in a way that each and every member of the NIPCO family possesses greater sense of belonging in the overall interest of the company, promising to take the form to greater heights.
He described the 2018 financial year as challenging especially with the setback suffered by the Petroleum Industry Governance bill, but said despite this and others, NIPCO was “able to drive its growth plans through expansion of some of its core business activities and a backward integration of its business lines.”
He said, “Management has continued to make more investments in the white and gas business to boost more revenues and deliver significant returns to you all. We were able to optimize cost without necessarily sacrificing quality service delivery,” emphasising that, “Fifteen years of operation in a stormy industry such as ours is great achievement worthy of applause.”
On his part, Chairman of NIPCO, Mr Bestman Anekwe, noted that, “We have maintained a constant expansion of our retail outlets and furthermore our company has maintained the lead in the LPG subsector by doubling the number of LPG skids and plants all over the country,” adding that the company was able to sustain its steady growth through strategic expansion of some of its core business activities and made a turnover of about N254 billion and a profit after tax of N1.5 billion
Mr Anekwe also noted these achievements were recorded in the face of the difficult operating environment, which had prevailed in the sector in the last few years, adding that the board of directors of the downstream oil sector player also proposed a total dividend of N563 million translating into 300k (N3) per share from the profit after tax, which was unanimously approved by the shareholders .
In the year under review, the firm declared a profit after tax of N1.58 billion and recorded N254 billion turnover, while deepening its petroleum products outlets expansion and doubling its LPG market share in Nigeria.
Dipo Olowookere