If you are one of those very active social media enthusiasts on WhatsApp, Twitter or Facebook, then you must have come across the image below.
List of shareholders in MTN as at May 2019.
The list above purportedly contains the list of shareholders of MTN Nigeria including their shareholding and percentage holdings of the company.
Why this matters? The above list shows shareholders who are likely to sell to potential investors in the company. Without them selling, you can’t buy. Interesting to note that 90% of the shares of the company is owned by corporations who hold their shares for strategic reasons and may not sell in the nearest future.
Billionaires club: All the current shareholders of MTN have shares valued in the billions except for, Karl Toriola who owns just 920,000 shares worth about N100 million. The next least shareholder with 177 million shares has a valuation of about N19.3 billion.
Who might sell? From the list above, the shareholders likely to sell their shares in MTN are those under pressure to have some cash. The only person on that list that might be under some form of pressure is Pascal Dozie. The Business Patriarch has lost ownership of Diamond Bank to Access Bank and may need cash to sojourn into something else, perhaps FinTech.
Something else: MTN has about 7,495,486,950 unissued shares which if sold today will be worth about N810 billion ($2.2 billion) based on the last closing price. If it ever decides to have a public offer, then these are the shares it will sell. For now, these shares remain unissued until a public offer is announced.