The MTN share price has been on a tear recently, post the results on the 7th of August, now just over a month ago. The stock was trading around 220 Rand, on Friday the stock crested 260 Rand. That means that the market capitalisation of the company, according to the balancing forces of the buyers and sellers, is 480 billion Rand. That is nearly half a trillion Rand, something that has taken a public listed company with private innovation across the continent nearly 20 years to achieve. The successes have been huge. I read and hear that government wants to somehow (with what money?) invest 100 billion Dollars (over one trillion Rand) and build a nuclear power base down here. That is a separate story.
On Thursday I received one of the emails from the lovely investor relations people at MTN: MTN AND IHS agree landmark mobile tower outsourcing agreement in Nigeria. It was not big enough to constitute a SENS announcement (in terms of value), techcentral suggested as much as 1.8 billion Rand -> MTN in its biggest ever tower sale. Sounds huge enough. I guess we will know sooner, rather than later, the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. And then I guess that we will see more information around this deal.