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No Plans to List Our Shares for Trading - Etisalat MD(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The management of mobile telecommunications giant, Etisalat Nigeria says it has no immediate plans to list its shares for trading on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Addressing journalists in Lagos, the company's management team, led by its Chief Executive, Matthew Willsher, however said there has been increasing confidence and advocacy to encourage more companies to list their shares on the bourse. According to him, "We don't have any specific plans to list, but we keep it in view." He, however, assured while fielding questions that "as our size of business improves, it is a possibility and the shareholders would decide." As part of plans to improve profitability amidst a harsh operating environment, the company has signed a deal with telecom infrastructure company IHS to sell 2,136 sub-towers as part of reducing cost and freeing some funds on its balance sheet. This will enable Etisalat focus on growing its core business rather than bothering about managing the masts in terms of acquiring and managing generating sets- buying batteries and replacing them every two years, and securing the mast, a mong others. He said IHS is committed on its part to investing about $100 million on the sites in the next one year, to ensure very high standard is maintained, leading to collocation of masts by two or more GSM operators, thereby reducing operating costs. "We are not profitable yet, but we are improving profitability through focus on capital efficiency, quality of service... our scale is growing. With 20 per cent growth in customer base, which is paying for the cost of the network (operation), we are confident about our future," he added. He also praised the industry's regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for the critical turn in regulation and adopting policies on dominance by one or two operators, a situation he said, is unhealthy. He also applauded the commission for championing issues of customer satisfaction and service quality, which led to the banning of operators except Etisalat from selling SIM cards for some time. As a result of its knack for quality, he said, Etisalat recorded 20 per cent growth in profit margin in the first half of 2014, as against just two per cent in the corresponding period of last year. Willshare added that the company's subscriber base currently stands at 19.5 million, up from 15.3 million last year, and growing at 20 per cent, assuring that there is no problem with growing at that rate. The challenge, he added, is coping with demand and ensuring that the right investment decisions are made, besides finding good collocation sites for its masts. Copyright Daily Independent. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |