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Victor Odili will collect about $19.9 million when MTN Nigeria pays its interim dividend next month, the largest single payment to any Nigerian on the register.
The telecom operator declared ₦26 a share on Thursday alongside half-year results showing profit up 70.6% to ₦707.54 billion. The dividend is payable on Sept. 7 to shareholders on the register at the qualification date of Aug. 20, subject to withholding tax.
Odili holds 1,065,110,916 shares, or 5.08% of the company. That produces ₦27.69 billion before tax, roughly $19.9 million at ₦1,390 to the dollar.
The stake behind it is worth about ₦912.9 billion, or $657 million, with MTN Nigeria carrying a market value near ₦18 trillion.
He does not hold the shares in his own name. MTN Nigeria's audited accounts record that Chief Victor Odili indirectly holds 5.08% through two entities, Hermitage Overseas Corporation with 4.32% and Hermitage Eko Investments with 0.76%. The second vehicle was established in 2014, more than a decade after his original investment.
That position has been growing quietly. He held 3.96%, or 806,886,900 shares, when MTN Nigeria listed in 2019. By the end of 2023 it had reached 4.46%. It now stands at 5.08%, an increase of roughly 258 million shares, meaning he has been adding to a holding most Nigerians do not know he owns.
The dividends have grown faster still. Odili earned ₦4.8 billion from MTN Nigeria's 2020 payout, when the company declared ₦5.90 a share. This single interim payment is nearly six times that.
The results that produced it were strong across almost every line. Revenue rose 29.5% to ₦2.993 trillion. Data revenue climbed 38.4%, with network traffic up 25.8% and average usage per subscriber rising 15.2% to 14.8 gigabytes. The subscriber base grew by 4.9 million to 92.2 million, and active data users by 2.5 million to 55.7 million.
Margins did the rest. Chief executive Karl Toriola said the company held operating expenditure growth to 11.3% while expanding EBITDA margin by 5.3 percentage points to 55.9%. Free cash flow rose 73.9% to ₦712.7 billion after ₦620.5 billion of capital spending. A steadier naira helped, closing the half at ₦1,380 to the dollar against ₦1,530 a year earlier.
Not everything improved. Fintech revenue fell 7.2% after the temporary suspension of the airtime and data credit service, and enterprise revenue slipped 0.4% on portfolio changes made in the first quarter. The underlying mobile money business grew about 132%, with active wallets up 1.3 million to 5 million, and the company is progressing a structural separation of the fintech unit subject to regulatory approval.
MTN Nigeria paid ₦622.6 billion in taxes and levies during the half.
A career built at sea
Odili's fortune did not begin in telecoms. He studied at Croydon Technical College in London and took his first degree at the London School of Economics, then joined Lonrho, the sprawling Anglo-African conglomerate, in London. The company later posted him to Beirut, where he spent years.
He returned to Nigeria and moved into business for himself, becoming chairman of Brawal Shipping Nigeria, which has operated in cargo transportation, shipping agency work and freight since 1981. Brawal sits inside Aeromaritime Group, the conglomerate he chairs as executive director, which runs more than eight companies across shipping, stevedoring, oil and gas and logistics.
His interests extend beyond the ports. He holds a directorship at Mainstream Energy Solutions, the power company that operates the Kainji and Jebba hydroelectric plants, alongside Colonel Sani Bello, whose own vehicle also appears on the MTN Nigeria register.
The MTN investment came through the telecom operator's pre-listing structure, when a small group of Nigerians took positions through special purpose vehicles well before the 2019 flotation. Odili served as a non-executive director until Sept. 2, 2019, and holds the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger.
He has remained largely absent from public view throughout, which is unusual for a man whose single telecom holding now exceeds the entire market capitalisation of most companies listed in Lagos.
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