The shareholders of TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria Plc have approved the sum of N8.49bn as a dividend for the 2023 financial year at N25 per share.
The approval was given at the 46th Annual General Meeting of the company which was held on Friday in Lagos.
According to the annual report of the company, the board proposed a dividend of N25 per share in 2023 same as N25 per unit in the previous year.
The dividend had been scheduled to be paid on Monday, however, after the chairman emeritus of the Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Sunny Nwosu, made a case for the immediate payment of the dividend, the chairman of the board of directors, Jean-Philipe Torres, announced that the dividend would be paid after the AGM on Friday.
Speaking on the floor of the AGM, Torres, said, that the economic headwinds had impacted the company’s profitability in 2023, saying, “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 revealed that the company had hired an expert in renewable energy to enable it to explore potential in the sector so as to boost 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.”
Discussing the company’s performance in 2023, Torres said that the company didn’t import PMS due to forex challenges, thus depending 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 delight at the final dividend and called on the management to do more so as to strengthen the profitability of the company.
In the year under review, TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria saw its revenue rise to N635.95bn from N482.47bn. However, its profit after tax declined by 20 per cent to N12.91bn from N16.12bn in 2022.
The parent company headquartered in France, TotalEnergies Marketing Service, holds 61.72 per cent of the shares in the Nigerian business while other shareholders hold 38.28 per cent.
Credit: punchng.com
