By Nana Appiah Acquaye, Accra, Ghana
Following the official announcement of a successful completion of MTN Ghana’s Initial Public Offer (IPO) in Accra, it emerged that 84.6 % of Ghanaian applicants bought their shares using the MTN Mobile Money Portal.
The 84.6%, which represents 108,433 applicants, were among 127,826 Ghanaians and 326 other Non-Ghanaians who together raised an amount of GHC 1,146,589,464.75.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, the offer goes down in history as the largest primary share offer in the history of the Ghana stock Exchange that enables many Ghanaians from all walks of life to own a share in one of Ghana’s largest, most visible and well respected companies.
Earlier last month Mr. Adadevoh has expressed satisfaction over response received by way of subscription of MTN’s first IPO through it Mobile Money platform. “What is particularly exciting is how many people have come through on the MoMo platform as well,” he said.
MTN Ghana on the 20th of April, 2018, received approval from regulatory bodies including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) and the Ghana Investment Promotion Council (GIPC) to proceed with the 35 per cent IPO which forms part of MTN’s 4G LTE license requirement in which the company had to sell 35% of its shares to Ghanaians by June 2018.
Ghana’s leading network operator with 17.8m subscribers representing a 47.6% market share in May this year made history in Africa as being the first telecommunication company to adopt the use of Mobile Money in its first Initial Public Offer (IPO) trading on the Ghanaian stock market.
Through its Initial Public Offer, MTN Ghana sought to raise about of GHS3.48 billion (over US$745 million) with each share sold at GHp75, but unfortunately could not meet the expected target.
Although it’s secured about GHS 1.14 Billion, one third of the initial target, officials of MTN Ghana still believes the IPO was successful and historic especially on the Ghana Stock market.
Non Ghanaian nationals bought 937,434,080 shares making them the majority shareholders by raising an amount of GHS 702,958,018.50 representing 61.31%. Ghanaian nationals secured GHC 443,631,446.25 with 593,040,280 shares representing 38.9%.
