Chief Executive Officer of CWG, Mr. Austin Okere
By Goddy Egene
The market capitalisation of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) was boosted by N14 billion last Friday following the listing of Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) Plc on the Nigerian bourse.
The Information Technology Communications (ICT) firm had its 2.5 billion listed at N5.48 per share. About 74.101 million units are traded after the listing of the shares.
The Chief Executive Officer of CWG, Mr. Austin Okere, who was excited about the about the company going public, revealed that with a seed capital of about N160,000 in 1992, the company received a valuation of N6.97billion in 2009 from Vetiva Capital for its private placement and the issue was oversubscribed with Private Equity firm Aureos Capital LLC taking up a major chunk.
According to him, that offer defied the depressed atmosphere of the global economic recession at that time.
He said the listing would give the company more visibility and aid it to achieve its vision of being the number one Information Technology Service enabler in Africa by 2015.
Okere noted that the company’s best was yet to arrive as CWG had over the years built a copious amount of its turnover into annuities from deploying its own intellectual property (IP), to enable financial inclusiveness in Mobility, such as the recently announced Y’ello Diamond Account, which will bring banking services to over 55 million Mobile phone subscribers and the MTN XaaS product, which will provide Financial services in the cloud for the over 1,000 Microfinance banks and their customers on a Pay As You Use basis.
“We have very good products and services that are enjoying very good patronage -about 12 of the large banks in Nigeria run on the Finacle Core banking Application, which CWG jointly promotes in West Africa with Infosys International, processing close to 70 per cent of all financial transactions in Nigeria and used by the likes of First Bank, UBA, Stanbic, FCMB et al he said.”
The CWG boss noted the company had taken advantage of its early mover status in the surge in ICT outsourcing demands to provide the service for the largest telecommunication company in Nigeria and the largest downstream company in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria.
“We are very certain that our shares would be well received by the market community, because we are in the ICT sector and Information Technology products and services will continue to be in high demand,” he said.