MTN Group Lists 1.35bn shares of its Rwandan subsidiary by introduction; boosts RSE market cap to $4bn

• …… to list on Ugandan Securities Exchange by 2022

Charles Abuede

Following its launch in 1998 in Rwanda, MTN Rwanda has dominated the country’s telecom sector by competing with the likes of Airtel, Liquid Telecom and Rwandatell; and the country’s mobile money space, competing with the Bank of Kigali. Consequently, the parent company, the MTN Group, has continued to seek markets for its expansion drive and also get listed on the country’s local bourse respectively.

Soon after the listings of MTN Ghana and MTN Nigeria in September 2018 and May 2019 respectively on the Ghana and Nigerian exchanges, MTN Rwanda, a subsidiary of the MTN Group, has on the 4th of May 2021, listed on the Rwandan Stock Exchange (RSE) following the approval by Rwanda’s Capital Market Authority (CMA) for a listing by introduction with 1.35 billion ordinary shares valued at $0.27 per share.

Listing by introduction on the Rwandan Stock Exchange

Listing by introduction is a way of listing shares already in issue on another exchange. In this situation for a firm, no marketing arrangement is required as the shares are already held universally as can be found in the case of the telecom giant when it listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group in May 2019.

Trading as “MTNR” MTN Rwandacell Plc will now be valued at roughly $364 million and should be a significant boost to Rwanda’s entire stock exchange market capitalisation from $3.6 billion to almost $4 billion.

Elsewhere, the Rwanda Stock Exchange (RSE), though, launched in January 2011 and relatively young just like its African counterparts (Kenya and Nigeria), recorded Bralirwa, Rwanda’s largest brewery and soft beverage company as the first listing in the same month of 2011 on the exchange. By the end of the first half of that same year, the Bank of Kigali followed the line alongside 7 other companies later that year. However, the arrival of MTN Rwanda to the exchange will now take the total number of companies to 10 listed firms on the country’s bourse.

Meanwhile, the road to the listing began in 2015 when Crystal telecom limited, a publicly traded company in the country, acquired a 20 per cent stake in MTN Rwanda through a special purpose vehicle while the continent’s wireless carrier owns 80 per cent. However, the country’s capital market authority has approved the distributions of the company’s 20 per cent in MTN among its shareholders; implying that any shareholder who has Crystal telecom shares, will also own a share of MTN.

The successful listing on the Rwandan Exchange by introduction makes the subsidiary the Group’s latest unit to list on a local exchange. Meanwhile, the MTN Group has a 2022 deadline to list on the Uganda Securities Exchange.