Why nearly half of Nigeria’s listed companies paid no dividends in three years

Companies such as Austin Laz, Cadbury, Caverton, Chams, Chellarams, Daar Communications, Dangote Sugar, Critical Minerals Financing Corporation (formerly Deep Capital), Ellah Lakes, Nigerian Enamelware, Eterna, ETranzact, Eunisell, Fortis Global, FTN Cocoa, Golden Guinea Breweries, Unity Bank and Guinness didn’t pay dividends regularly as they had been held back by negative retained earnings for years.

In this class is Access Holdings, which in recent years has used the lion’s share of its retained earnings to drive a formidable pan-African expansion, unmatched by any Nigerian company, and broadly branch out beyond its core banking business into other promising sectors within financial services.“If a company “takes up a strategy that they want to expand, for example Access Bank or you see that UACN is expanding and they’ve acquired CHI, that gives the prospect that this company is expanding their operations and are going to get bigger or they’ll have a wider reach in the market,” Ms Oyenuga said in response to whether stocks that don’t pay dividends stand a chance of capital appreciation.