Lafarge shareholders approve N100bn bond issuance

Shareholders of Lafarge Plc have approved plans of the company to issue an N100 billion bond later in 2018.

At the annual general meeting of the company that held in Lagos on Wednesday, the company said the proceeds of the bond will be used to refinance the company’s debts.

Mobolaji Balogun, the company chairman, said the company had a debt of $600 billion in 2016.

“In order to address the impact on the business, $300 million was hedged via non-deliverable forward FX contracts provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria,” he said.

The company then raised N131.6 billion from a rights issue, which was subscribed by 100 percent.

Balogun said the N100 billion will be used to refinance already existing debts.

“The proposal this year is to refinance some of that debt. We cannot continue to sit on a large concentration of dollar-denominated debts and therefore, we need to refinance.”

He also assured shareholders that the capital restructuring of the company carried out in 2017 would help to significantly reduce the cost of financing and currency translation risk.

Expressing optimism about the company’s performance in 2018, Michel Puchercos, country chief executive officer, Lafarge Africa, said the first quarter results of the company showed stability in the market and

“Improvement plans in Nigeria delivered strong operational performance while turnaround actions will be consolidated further in 2018 through energy optimization as well as commercial and logistic improvement.”

The company also said it would pay shareholders N13.01 billion as dividends for the year ended December 31, 2017.