Johannesburg - Outgoing MTN Group
[JSE:MTN] CEO
Phuthuma Nhleko may have secured himself hundreds of millions, thanks to his participation in the company's black economic empowerment (BEE) share offer.
The Zakhele BEE share scheme offer had been more than 1.7 times oversubscribed and applicants could not get all the shares they had applied for.
About a week ago Nhleko also became R400m richer after selling 3.2m shares at the market price.
According to MTN, this deal was done partly because of commitments following a transaction with a commercial bank.
But Nhleko is not the only one benefiting greatly from the Zakhele offer.
Cyril Ramaphosa’s Shanduka Group received more than 11% of the shares on offer.
MTN had offered the public 80.9m shares at R20/share.
On Friday the company's share price closed at R125.50.
Zakhele shares are not currently freely available on the market. When they are, the just over 2m shares (2.5% of the offer) that Nhleko and his wife bought at the current price will be worth R250m - netting a profit of more than R200m.
Nhleko bought the shares at R20 each for a total price of R40.2m.
Shanduka’s 9.3m shares (bought for R187m) will then be worth R1.16bn - netting a profit of almost a billion rand should the current share price remain at this level.
According to MTN the offer had raised some R2.8bn for the company.
The 1.7 times oversubscription meant that about 137.5m Zakhele shares had been applied for.
MTN said that all black employees and directors had been entitled to participate in the scheme. The directors had been able to buy the shares at the same price as the public could.
Apart from Shanduka and Nhleko, other MTN directors together bought 760 000 of the 80.9m shares.
According to MTN, more than 98% of the applications had been from individuals, 94% of whom had received all the shares they applied for.
Kaplan Equity Analysts expert Irnest Kaplan explained that companies generally applied a formula when an offer was oversubscribed.
One might wonder whether the formula had been equitably applied, he said. Someone might, for example, have applied for 200 shares and received only 100.
According to the same formula someone might have applied for 10m shares and received only a million. So, he asked, had the formula been fairly applied?