EXCLUSIVE: Airtel to list on NSE July 5

Airtel Africa will list its shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday, July 5, TheCable understands.

The company listed its shares on the London Stock Exchange on Friday morning and is expected to announce its share price for the NSE listing.

According to the listing prospectus, Airtel hopes to raise $750 million through listings on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange.

The telco said it would offer between 501.125 million and 716.406 million shares to Nigerians through book building.

Book building is a process used by companies to raise capital through public offerings, both initial public offers (IPOs) or follow-on public offers (FPOs), to aid price and demand discovery.

However, only high net-worth individuals and institutional investors that have a minimum of $3 million in investable assets will be offered shares.

Proceeds from the initial public offering would be mainly used for debt reduction.

The issuing houses for the offer are Barclays Securities Nigeria and Quantum Zenith Securities Investments Limited.

For its London Stock Exchange listing, the final offer stood at 744 million new shares with a deal size of £595 million and the initial market capitalisation at about £3.1 billion at issue.

MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest telco, listed by way of introduction in May.

Airtel is the third largest telecommunications company in the country.