LAGOS, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)-TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria Plc shareholders have approved a dividend of N8.49 billion for the 2023 financial year, amounting to N25 per share.
This decision was reached during the company’s 46th Annual General Meeting held on Friday in Lagos.
According to the company’s annual report for 2023, the board proposed a dividend of N25 per share, consistent with the previous year’s dividend.
Initially scheduled for payment on Monday, the chairman emeritus of the Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Sunny Nwosu, advocated for immediate payment during the Annual General Meeting (AGM). Following this, board chairman Jean-Philippe Torres announced that the dividend would be disbursed after the AGM on Friday.
Speaking on the floor of the AGM, Torres stated that economic headwinds had adversely affected the company’s profitability in 2023, remarking that “You know the situation of the country, even better than me. It was very complicated. We tried to give the highest dividend as much as possible. The revenue increased by 32 per cent, which is good but the cost of goods also increased more or less by the same percentage. Unfortunately, we suffered last year a significant exchange loss of more than N11bn and this is we couldn’t maintain this year, the level of profit of the previous year. Plus, inflation was at almost 30 per cent last year.”
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Torres additionally disclosed that the company had enlisted a renewable energy expert to facilitate exploration of opportunities in the sector, aiming to enhance its product offerings
He said, “The company hired a renewable explorer. He’s visiting different sites to see how to bring up new projects with new energy. His job description is to assess all the possibilities we have, all the possible projects we can find in renewable energy in order to change the energy mix of the company.”
In discussing the company’s performance in 2023, Torres mentioned that due to forex challenges, the company refrained from importing PMS and instead relied on NNPC Limited for its supply.
“In 2023, due to unavailability of foreign exchange, TotalEnergies like other marketers did not import PMS NNPC maintained the role of sole importer of PMS and we and other marketers purchased PMS and AGO from NNPC. During the year, there were several outages of PMS which slowed activities in our stations across the country. AGO & Jet A1 remain fully deregulated but access to foreign exchange by marketers continues to be a challenge, inhibiting imports. The price of AGO opened the year at N850/L and closed as high as N1,200 per litre,” he said.
Some shareholders expressed satisfaction with the final dividend and urged management to take further actions to bolster the company’s profitability.
During the year under review, TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria witnessed a revenue increase to N635.95bn from N482.47bn.
However, its after-tax profit decreased by 20% to N12.91bn from N16.12bn in 2022.
The parent company, TotalEnergies Marketing Service, based in France, owns 61.72% of the shares in the Nigerian business, with the remaining 38.28% held by other shareholders.