Nov 17 (Lagos) - Sovereign Trust Insurance Plc (
SOVRENINS ) traded 1.5 billion shares in today's session and it caught our eye @easykobo and that is the reason it is today's hot stock.
That represents almost 19% of the Company's outstanding shares. So clearly something is going on here.
The ownership structure of this
SOVRENINS is such that 5 of its directors controlled 2.79 billion shares at the end of 2016. Total shares outstanding are 8.3 billion units. Therefore 33% of the Company is owned by 5 directors of the Company. The following info shows that public already held less than 50% of shares as at end of 2016 according to the Company's annual report.
SHAREHOLDERS WITH 5% SHAREHOLDING AND ABOVE
NAME OF holder Holding % OF HOLDING
TEEOF Holdings Limited 1,221,572,742 14.65
Bayelsa State Government 900,000,000 10.79
Faloughi Ephraim F. 697,013,237 8.36
TWSN Limited 592,282,401 7.1
Sovereign Investments Limited 518,764,803 6.22
Insurance Management Consultants 500,962,548 6.01
Others 3,910,227,565 46.87
TOTAL 8,340,823,296 100
Either a new investor is coming in with a view to run the Company or it could be a hostile takeover bid. There is no official news yet and this is based on our observations in the market today. Alternately it could be a move by directors to acquire more shares from public and take the Company private. We will have to wait and see.
For 2016, the Company posted profit after tax of N 23.5 million which was sharply lower than N 557 million the Company posted as PAT for 2015. This year going by the 9 months report, the Company seems to be on track to outperform the 2015 numbers but we will have to wait till the year end by when the picture can change.
Company does not currently pay a dividend and its shares have been stuck at 50 kobo levels for multiple years.
We will be watching this from the sidelines with no intention of jumping into this. However the shares could move higher if such heavy trading persists next week. Someone is clearly buying into this with purpose.
reporting for easykobo.com on Friday, Nov 17 2017 from Lagos, Nigeria