MTN Nigeria’s shares rose 10% yesterday, to its highest in two weeks after the country’s attorney general withdrew a $2 billion tax demand against the company.
Shares in MTN, Nigeria’s second biggest listed firm, rose to 127.60 naira each, helping lift the broader market index by 1.6%.
Nigeria is MTN’s biggest market, with 58 million users in 2018 accounting for a third of the South African group’s core profit.
The tax case had cast a cloud over the telecoms firm as investors feared that the tax demand could affect MTN’s value.
The company floated its shares on the Lagos bourse last year after its parent company, South Africa’s MTN Group resolved another case with Nigerian authorities over more than 5 million unregistered SIM cards.
Since the $6.5 billion listing last May, MTN ‘s stock peaked in September before declining to N105 per share last month, near its listing price of 99 naira.
The company has announced that it will sell more shares to the public and increase local ownership once the tax row is resolved.
The company, which disputed the claim from the start, had struggled to convince investors it could get the tax demand canceled. Its shares closed 5.3% higher in Johannesburg on Friday after Nigeria’s Attorney General said he’d dropped the case, their biggest jump since March.
