MTN Uganda has raised its full year dividend for the year ended December 2024 by 25.6 percent to Ush22.6 (Sh0.79) per share, handing Kenyan investors who bought shares in the company an earnings boost.
The Ugandan telco raised its payout for the period after reporting a 30 percent jump in net profit to Ush641.5 billion (Sh22.6 billion) from Ush493.08 billion (Sh17.3 billion) in 2023.
Kenyan institutional and individual investors, among them the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) pension scheme and businessman Baloobhai Patel took up shares in MTN Uganda during its 2021 initial public offering.
Mr Patel’s earnings will be Sh12.4 million from his 15.7 million shares, while the CBK pension scheme’s 12.4 million shares will earn it a payout of Sh9.8 million.
MTN Uganda makes its dividend distribution via a series of quarterly interim payouts, meaning that the investors already banked the bulk of their dues in the first three quarters of the financial year.
The final dividend payout of Ush8.50 (Sh0.30) per share will be made on June 20, for investors who will be on the company’s books as at June 2.
In a briefing on Thursday, MTN Uganda Chief Executive Sylvia Mulinge said the company would continue to pay out at least 75 percent of distributable profit as dividend.
This year’s dividend represents a payout ratio of 78.7 percent. It is however lower than the 2023 ratio of 81.8 percent, when the firm paid out a total of Ush403 billion (Sh14.17 billion).
Other Kenyan retail investors also took up stakes in the Ugandan firm, whose share price has appreciated by 35 percent to Ush270 (Sh9.49) per unit from the 2021 IPO price of Ush200 (Sh7).
The listing of MTN Uganda, and later Airtel Uganda in 2023, was done after a directive by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) to foreign-owned telcos to reserve at least 20 percent of shares to locals and East Africans to spur local ownership of the telecoms industry.
The IPO saw the firm’s South African parent MTN Group cut its stake from 96.01 percent to 83.04 percent.
MTN Uganda carried out a second offer last May to offload a further 7.03 percent stake in order to comply with the UCC rules, with the transaction cutting the multinational’s ownership to 76 percent. The offer was priced at Ush170 (Sh5.97) per share.
