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LAFARGE AFRICA PLC Company Update - Opts for Rights issue amidst debt restructuring

In a notice of Annual General Meeting (AGM) released yesterday, Lafarge Africa PLC (WAPCO) announced plans to seek its shareholders’ approval to raise capital up to a sum of ₦140 billion by way of a Rights Issue of ordinary shares at its next AGM scheduled for 7 June, 2017. More importantly, management will be requesting that, “…the Directors be and hereby authorized to apply any convertible loan, shareholder loan or any other loan facility due to any person, from the Company, as may be agreed by the person and the Company, towards payment for any shares subscribed for by such person under the Rights Issue”. Taking a cue from this statement, we are of the opinion that the capital raise program (₦140 billion) is an attempt to pay down the outstanding value of WAPCO’s dollar denominated quasi-equity instrument of ₦150 billion (using current exchange rate of NGN305/USD). By implication, existing shareholders with interest in the quasi instrument (previously shareholder loan) will have the option to subscribe for the offer using their outstanding stake in the quasi instrument.

The details on timing and price of the Rights are yet to be communicated. However, assuming that the Rights is issued at WAPCO’s 30-day VWAP (₦48.31), we estimate that a full subscription to the offer would increase WAPCO’s outstanding shares by 55%. Meanwhile, with the potential liquidation of the quasi-instrument, we would no longer have to back out its value (₦155 billion using our FY’17E NGN350/USD exchange rate) from WAPCO’s enterprise value in arriving at our equity valuation per share. That said, we expect the increased equity value to offset the impact of increased number of shares on our valuation per share (depending on the extent of the Rights price discount to market price). Using our VWAP assumption as the Rights price, we estimate WAPCO’s post-conversion target price at ₦72.52, still at a decent potential upside to current price of ₦49.60. Pending further details from the management however, we retain our target price at ₦77.32 (BUY).