Onome Amuge
Dangote Cement’s pan-African subsidiaries swung to a profitable financial performance in the second quarter of 2025, breaking a 12-year cycle of losses that had eroded the group’s balance sheet and dented shareholder returns.
The company, Africa’s largest cement producer by capacity, reported that its offshore operations delivered a net profit of N250billion in Q2, reversing a N101 billion loss in the first three months of the year. The turnaround means the subsidiaries contributed roughly N140 billion in net profit to the group at the half-year, accounting for nearly half of quarterly group earnings.
The reversal is historic for the Nigerian multinational, which has struggled since 2014 to make its pan-African expansion profitable. Cumulative losses from offshore units had mounted to N610 billion by the end of Q1 2025, reflecting weak revenues, rising costs, and most recently, the debilitating impact of naira volatility.
Offshore sales revenue for the quarter slipped 15 per cent year-on-year to N359.5 billion, while operating profit fell to under N21 billion, compared with N76.6 billion in the same quarter of 2024. What lifted the bottom line was the elimination of foreign exchange losses, which had previously inflated finance costs. The relative stability of the naira in recent months spared the company a repeat of the N201 billion in FX losses booked during the first half of 2024.
Dangote Cement reported a profit after tax of N520.5 billion for the six months to June, more than double the N190 billion posted in the prior year and already ahead of the company’s full-year 2024 profit of N503 billion. Net profit margin climbed to 25.1 per cent, up from 10.8 per cent a year earlier. Earnings per share rose to N30.74, compared with N11.28 in H1 2024.
Revenue growth slowed to 17.7 per cent year-on-year, with sales topping N2 trillion, down from the 62.7 per cent leap recorded in 2024. Group sales volumes slipped to 13.36 million tonnes from 13.93 million tonnes in the same period last year, reflecting a contraction in production. But price adjustments and tighter cost controls drove profitability higher.
Cost of sales rose only marginally to N853.6 billion, enabling gross profit to rise by 31 per cent to N1.22 trillion. Operating expenses were pared back, while finance costs fell 35 per cent to N216 billion, again thanks largely to the absence of FX-related charges.
The positive offshore contribution also holds strategic significance for Dangote Cement, which has long sought to position itself as a pan-African champion. Since 2014, its investments in plants across sub-Saharan Africa have delivered mixed results, hindered by foreign currency shortages, logistics bottlenecks, and fluctuating demand.
The company’s interim results show that 46 per cent of Q2 group profit came from outside Nigeria, underscoring the scale of the rebound.
As it stands, management will point to the half-year numbers as vindication of its strategy. After a bruising 2024, Dangote Cement has delivered a 174 per cent profit increase year-on-year, demonstrating resilience in its core Nigerian operations while pulling off a notable offshore recovery.
