IPO ALERT, LISTING 19 NOV: Telecommunications company MTC Namibia is to list for trading on the Namibian Stock Exchange at 9am tomorrow (19 November) after raising N$2.54 billion ($162.5 million) out of a target of N$3.12bn. It is 3 times bigger than the previous largest IPO on the NSX.
The Namibian Government’s Namibia Post and Telecommunications Holdings Limited (NPTH) was selling off 49% of its shareholding in the telco in an IPO that launched on 22 September and closed on 1 November. NPTH, a 100% state-owned enterprise (SOE), retains control.
Investors snapped up 299.0m shares out of a total of 367.5m shares that were offered at N$8.50 each. According to figures released yesterday (17 November), retail applicants made 5,535 applications and bought N$137.2 m shares, while Namibian institutional investors made 76 applications and bought N$2.4bn of shares.
UPDATE: The shares traded higher on the first day on the NSX, and closed at N$8.76 per share.
All applications were fully allocated, according to the SENS (Stock Exchange News Service) announcement of the results on the NSX and the JSE SENS announcement can be found here.
Namibian finance house Cirrus Capital tweeted: “While falling short of the target, this IPO is more than three times larger than the previous largest IPO on the NSX”, The Government had earlier budgeted to raise only N$1.5bn from the listing.
Namibian sovereign wealth fund (SWF) coming?
According to this report on news website The Brief, “Government has already hinted at the possibility of using 50% of proceeds from the IPO as seed capital to kick-start the much-anticipated sovereign wealth fund (SWF), dubbed the Welwitschia Fund, which is expected to be operational before the end of the year.”
The Board announcement read: “All minimum spread and free float requirements for a main board listing, as required in terms of the Namibian Stock Exchange (“NSX”) Listing Requirements, have been fulfilled. The free-float of MTC at listing will be 39.9%. The NSX has approved the listing of all the issued ordinary shares of MTC on the NSX with effect from 9am on Friday, 19 November 2021.” The share code will be MOC.
Joint sponsors to MTC were IJG Securities (Pty) Limited and PSG Wealth Management (Namibia) (Pty) Limited.
MTC has 91% share of the Namibian market with 2.58m (up by 2.1%) subscribers. Mobile network covers 97% of the population in the large country, with 100% planned by 2023, and mobile broadband covers 87%. See our report on the MTC share offer IPO on 1 September.
