Firm to sell shares in Oando as losses hits N132bn

A Federal High Court in Lagos has approved the purchase of all the minority shares of Venus Construction Company Ltd in Oando PLC as the energy firm reports N132 billion net loss.

According to its filing on the NGX, the approval was part of the outcomes of the petition filed by 14 shareholders, holding 299,257,869 shares in Oando.

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In the disclosure signed by the Company Secretary, Ayotola Jagun, Venus had approached the court on March 25, 2021 for the shares buyout either by Ocean and Oil Development Partners Limited, OODP or Oando.

The court ordered Oando PLC to convene within 120 days a meeting of shareholders to consider, and approve for the Oando shares purchases; Oando told NGX it will take a step in one month for that.

“Today, OODP has a shareholding of 57.37% in Oando PLC and the above-mentioned minority shareholders 42.63% shareholding. This action precipitated by the petition from certain Oando minority shareholders, if approved by all the minority shareholders at the court-ordered meeting will result in a voluntary delisting of the Company’s shareholding on the NGX,” it noted.

Meanwhile, its unaudited results for the four quarters of 2020 reported Loss-After-Tax of N132.6bn compared to N207.1bn in 2019; it recorded 15% turnover decrease which was N490bn compared to N576.6bn in 2019.

However, the firm recorded a 5% production increase in upstream operation, 44,550 barrels of oil equivalent boe)/day compared to 42,492boe earlier, among other indices.

In the downstream sector, its traded crude oil volumes rose by 13% to 16.1 million from 14.2mwhile traded refined petroleum products rose to 694,653MT (53%) from 452,919MT in 2019; its borrowing however rose to N419.6bn rising by 16% from N362.2bn.

The Group Chief Executive, Oando PLC, Wale Tinubu, said: “2020 proved to be an unprecedented year for the global economy due to the impact of the novel COVID-19 pandemic. This resulted in us having to impair a portion of the goodwill on our balance sheet to ensure the carrying value of our assets was a true reflection of the environment we were operating in.”