The shareholders at the virtual 12th Annual General Meeting
(AGM) held in Lagos, also commended the management for the full disclosure
provided for the year, share buyback process and the various donations made at
COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking at the 12th annual general meeting (AGM) in Lagos,
the founding National Coordinator, Independent Shareholders Association of
Nigeria, Sir Sunny Nwosu commended the company for attaining a trillion-naira
revenue growth, saying that the company was moving in the best way of corporate
governance.
He appealed to the company to prevail on its numerous
distributors who arbitrarily sell cement at very high costs as against the real
factory price, thereby making so much profit for themselves.
Another shareholder, Nona Awoh applauded the board for the
consistency in dividend payout, urging the board to consider payment of
dividend twice a year.
In his address to shareholders, Chairman of Dangote Cement
Plc, Aliko Dangote assured them of better returns always, noting that the company
is doing everything possible to create wealth for its shareholders and other
stakeholders.
According to him, despite the challenging year impacted by
COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a record year for Dangote Cement across board.
“Dangote Cement hit the N1 trillion mark in term of revenue.
Group revenues were up 16 per cent compared to 2019. We record Group cement
sales of 25.7 million tonnes (Mt) and revenues of N1.034 trillion. Most notably
was our record high EBITDA of N478.1 billion, up 20.9 per cent compared to
2019…”
He said in 2020, they inaugurated their Apapa and Onne
export terminals in Nigeria and commenced clinker exports to West and Central
Africa.
“The vision for our exporter strategy is to make West and
Central Africa cement and clinker self-sufficient, with Nigeria as the main
supplier and exporter. We also remain focused on meeting the demand in Nigeria
and as such, we increased our capacity by three metric tonnes (MT) on Obajana
and we commissioned our gas-fired power plant in Tanzania.Our Nigerian domestic
operations sold 15.6Mt, up 14.3 per cent year-on-year, growing ahead the
market. This strong volume growth was enhanced by our successful innovative
national consumer promotion ‘Bag of Goodies- Season 2’, lower rains in the Q3
compared to the previous year and the low interest rate environment driving
strong demand for real estate assets and supporting the construction sector,”
he said.