EDIT September 5 2018: MTN Ghana shares listed on September 5. Bloomberg reports that Africa’s largest mobile-phone company sold 1.5 billion shares in its Ghana unit at 75 pesewas each, a large addition to potential volumes on a market where 323 million shares were traded in the whole of 2017, according to data from the bourse. Of the 128,152 new shareholders who bought stock in MTN Ghana, 127,653 are retail investors. The exchange had 976,068 investors in equity and debt securities last year. On Wednesday, the stock closed unchanged after more than 5 million shares were traded.
Original June 4: MTN Ghana the leading Telco in that country has just launched an IPO as part of a requirement for obtaining a 4G license in 2015 and which has resulted in the offer of 35% ownership in the company to Ghanaian investors and with the shares listed thereafter.
MTN Ghana: It is the largest telco company in Ghana with 17.8 million subscribers, and with an estimated 47% market share and 12 million data customers. MTN Ghana had 2017 revenue of GHS 3.42 billion (about $728 million) and a net profit of GHS 715 million ($152 million). They target is to pay put 60% of profit as dividends. It is part of the MTN Group that has 217 million customers across 22 Africa and the Middle East countries such as Uganda, South Sudan South Africa Sudan (not Kenya but for a corporate business unit), and it is the largest telco in 14 of these countries.
Looking at the IPO documents in an A to Z format:
Ghana: Ghana is the second biggest economy in West Africa. It has a population of 28 million, and a recent average economic growth rate of 7.0% per year. Ghana has a mobile penetration of 130% (38 million customers), and besides MTN, other companies are Airtel, Tigo, Vodafone and Glo.
GSE: The MTN Ghana shares, which will trade as MTNGH, will be listed on the Ghana stock exchange, which operates three markets including a main market with 34 listed equities, an alternative market and a fixed income market.
IPO Applications: Ghanaians can subscribe for the new shares through MTN USSD app, online, or at MTN branches. Payment options are by cash, cheque, MTN money, bank transfers and (Visa & MasterCard) debit cards, while payment by credit cards and postal orders are not allowed. Customers (who are clients of IC Securities) will also be able to trade/sell their share by USSD on the phone app
Mobile Money: 11.6 million customers use it to do a variety of things including money transfers (they have 90,000 agents/merchants), buy airtime, bill payments, bulk payments, pay fees to schools on the platform, save (and invest), “TBill4All” (partnership with Ecobank Ghana enables buying of treasury bills), “Y’ello” save (partnerships with Fidelity Bank for savings), international remittance, send money to bank accounts, buy “mi-life” insurance and do ATM cash-outs at machines at 8 of the 17 banks that MTN partners with. “MoMo” has also used for payment in the Google store since December 2017.
Shareholding changes: Ahead of the IPO, MTN Group owns 97.65% and a company called Zent 2.35%; after the IPO it is envisioned that MTN Group will have 63%, Zent 1.91% and new investors 35%. The minimum target to be deemed a success is 10% i.e uptake of 0.35 billion GHS ($75 million) – and allocation to non-Ghanaians will be limited to 5% of the issues shares
Taxes: MTN Ghana pays about 3% of Ghana government tax revenue and supports 500,000 jobs through its ecosystem of suppliers. It paid 1.1 billion cedis ($225 million) in 2017 as income tax, communication fees, withholding, customs duties, PAYE and other taxes.
Threats: The document cites threats to MTN Ghana growth plans including; battery theft (from cell sites), fibre cuts (average 3 per day on their 5,000 kilometre nationwide fibre network), SImbox fraud, load shedding (electricity power shortages), OTT calls and competition from other Telco’s.
Timelines: The IPO runs for nine weeks from 29 May to 31 July 2018. There will be regional sideshows for two weeks in June, and allotment and listing are planned for on 5 September 2018. If there is an oversubscription, refunds will be from August 8.
Transaction advisors: The sponsoring stockbroker is IC securities, and receiving agents are all stockbrokers and receiving banks are almost about 20 Ghanaian banks – such as Access, Ecobank, Barclays, UBA, FBN, GT Bank, Societe Generale, Standard Chartered, Stanbic, Zenith, FBN, GN, and Fidelity.
Valuation: They are offering 4.63 billion shares at GHS 0.75 per share (about $0.16 or Kenya 16.1 per share ) and MTN Ghana can employees get a 10% discount. The offer documents by MTN Ghana compared its implied value from the IPO of about $2.2 billion (GHS 10 billion) to other peer Telco’s including MTN Group (South Africa) $18.6 billion, Bharti Airtel (India) $26.2 billion), Etisalat (UAE) $40.5 billion), Safaricom (Kenya) $11.5 billion), Itissalat Al-Maghrib (Morocco) $14.3 billion, Sonatel (Senegal) $4.0 billion, and Vodacom Group (SA) $22.6 billion) .