TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria Plc’s shareholders have authorized a dividend of N8.49 billion for the fiscal year 2023, at N25 per share.
This was disclosed at the 46th Annual General Meeting of the company which was held on Friday in Lagos.
According to the company’s annual report, the board suggested a dividend of N25 per share in 2023, the same as in the previous year.
The dividend was supposed to be paid on Monday, but after the chairman emeritus of the Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Sunny Nwosu, advocated for immediate payment, the chairman of the board of directors, Jean-Philipe Torres, announced that the dividend would be paid after the AGM on Friday.
Commenting, Torres said “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.”
Torres also stated that the company had employed a renewable energy expert to help it explore opportunities in the industry and expand 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 to change the energy mix of the company.”
Torres stated that the company did not import PMS because of forex issues, hence it 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 were delighted with the final dividend and urged management to do more to boost the company’s profitability.
TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria’s revenue increased to N635.95 billion from N482.47 billion in the previous fiscal year. However, its earnings after tax decreased by 20% to N12.91 billion from N16.12 billion in 2022.
TotalEnergies Marketing Service, the parent company headquartered in France, owns 61.72 percent of the shares in the Nigerian business, with other shareholders owning 38.28 percent.
