Dangote Cement looking to list on London Stock Exchange early in 2019, expanding through acquisitions

 A number of banks have approached the company to arrange the initial public offering, as it looks to expand into markets such as Brazil, Peru and Nepal.

Dangote Cement, Africa’s biggest producer of the building material, may carry out its long-planned listing of shares in London after Nigerian elections early next year, as it looks to expand through acquisitions.

“We are working on it and we will look at it in 2019,” Edwin Devakumar, group executive director at Dangote Industries, said in an interview near Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, on Wednesday. “We have grown to this extent mostly via greenfield investments. To grow much more, we would probably have to do it via acquisitions.”

A number of banks have approached the company to arrange the initial public offering (IPO), though none has been mandated and there’s been no decision about how much to raise, he said. About 15 percent of Dangote Cement’s shares are listed in Lagos, where it has a market value of ₦3.9 trillion (US$10.8 billion).

The firm, controlled by Aliko Dangote, considered raising equity in London back in 2010. At the time, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley helped it prepare a sale that could have raised as much as US$5 billion, before the move was abandoned.

Dangote Cement has looked at expanding outside of Africa into markets such as Brazil, Peru and Nepal, according to Devakumar.

Dangote Industries is a holding company for the group and has interests in sugar, flour, oil refining and petrochemicals as well as cement.

The revival of the IPO plans led to Dangote Cement appointing former Xstrata CEO Mick Davis and Cherie Blair, lawyer and wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to its board in April. “That was another step toward the listing,” said Devakumar.

Nigeria’s presidential and parliamentary vote is scheduled for February 16, with incumbent Muhammadu Buhari set to run for a 2nd term. Elections for state governors will take place in March.
The economy – Africa’s largest – is slowly recovering after being battered by a crash in oil prices in 2014.

Source: Bloomberg News