Signs that the restrictions placed on the sale of white products around Nigerian borders had minimal impact on Conoil Nigeria emerged last week when the company announced its unaudited financial statement for the fourth quarter ended 31 December 2019. Insights gained from its financials showed that gross revenue, profit for the year and shareholders ‘funds increased by 14 percent, 11 percent and 3 percent respectively.
The Nigerian government last year instructed downstream firms not to sell white products within 20 kilometres to Nigerian borders with the neighbouring countries. This sudden policy in some way affected downstream firms with retail outlets within the region specified.
That is not the case of Conoil Nigeria Plc which made N139.75 billion as revenue in 2019 in contrast to N122.21 billion in the previous year, representing an crease of 14 percent.
Conoil Nigeria has two product lines which are white products and lubricants. In 2019 white products fetched the firm N132.58 billion, representing 95 percent of the company’s income while with N7.18 billion from lubricants, that product line accounted for 5 percent. White products gulped N121.4 billion as cost of sales while lubricants gulped N4.65 billion, which brought the total cost of sales to N126.04 billion in 2019.
Profit after tax for the year was N1.98 billion in 2019 as against N1.79 billion in 2018.
Market sentiments remained unchanged after the release of the results as the price of the stock in down by -2.7 percent year to date to N18 per share. Last week Friday, investors traded 138,532 shares of Conoil worth N2.52 million.
In 2019 dividend season, Conoil Nigeria paid stakeholders N2 per share as the final dividend, and the current results give stakeholders the hope that similar dividend policy will be implemented in the 2020 dividend season.
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