These are the largest public traded companies in Nigeria (by market cap) in order – Dangote Cement, MTN, Airtel, and Unilever. Technically, they are also the largest companies in Nigeria by valuation (I am not sure there are private ones larger than these four). MTN and Airtel have found themselves ahead of Unilever. Meanwhile, Airtel Nigeria continues to anchor Airtel Africa business which posted $132.2 net profit last quarter. When Interswitch gets in the game, it will move some places in the ranking.
Bharti Airtel’s Africa arm posted net profit of $132.2 million in the June quarter, a fall of 12.2% from the corresponding quarter of the previous year, as higher finance costs and lower gains on exceptional items offset its growth in operating profit.
It posted revenue of $795.9 million, up 6.9% year-on-year from $744.5 million, largely driven by double-digit growth in Nigeria and East Africa, but partially offset by a decline in revenue in the rest of Africa, the company said.
The revenue increase is significant for the African arm of Bharti Airtel, which battles a bruising tariff war with rival Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd at home.
Airtel Africa’s customer base stands at 99.7 million. Its average revenue per user (Arpu) was $2.7 in the June quarter.
The key data there is the ARPU which is now $2.7. Last year, it was $3 for Airtel Africa.
Yet, even though Airtel Africa made a full year profit, challenges lie ahead. Just as I have noted on MTN Nigeria which had seen its ARPU (average revenue per user) dropped from $22 (in 2005) to $4.14 in Q1 2018, Airtel Africa is even doing worse: $3 in 2017. Airtel does not break its African operation by countries; so we do not have Airtel specific Nigerian number. (9Mobile and Glo are private companies; you do not expect to know anything about their financials.)
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It is now obvious that Telecom business is money spinning.I know that Glo and 9mobile are not doing badly.They need to list their shares on the floor of Nigerian Exchange Stock(NSE) because it will impact positively on entire financial system and the economy in generally.The funds generated from capital market are long term in nature and they move from deficit to surplus units of the financial system either directly or through intermediation to organizations and individuals that need the fund.The impact is felt more unlike when organizations and individuals invest in money market instruments like treasury bills which has 91days maturity date although with new CBN policy individuals and organizations have option of investing in TBills with 1year maturity date.It obvious that Prof. used the total market capitalization of each company in ranking them.Please, what are the parameters used for establishing that they the largest companies in Nigeria.Do you know the total assets of each of the company? What about the number of of employees,branches etc of each of the quoted company?.
“It obvious that Prof. used the total market capitalization of each company in ranking them.” Yes, market cap. I will update to make that clear.