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Tullow Oil Plc (TLW), the London-based explorer with the most licenses in Africa, advanced in its first day of trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange, where it is the biggest company by market value.
The stock, which listed at 31 cedis, climbed to 31.1 cedis by 12:24 p.m. in the capital, Accra. Tullow’s market value is about 28.2 billion cedis ($18 billion) and will more than double the exchange’s capitalization, the company said on July 21. Tullow replaces Standard Chartered Bank Ghana Ltd. as the country’s biggest company, with the lender’s market value at 1.2 billion cedis, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“The company will add liquidity to the Accra bourse in the sense that it offers a company of size that is investable,” Jeff Foli, a stock trader at Accra-based IC Securities Ltd. said by phone today. It is “the first oil and gas exploration and production firm to list on the market.”
Tullow, which also trades in the U.K. and Ireland, operates Ghana’s Jubilee oil field, West Africa’s biggest discovery of crude from an offshore field in a decade. Daily output from the field is expected to climb to 120,000 barrels per day by August or September from 80,000 barrels now, according to Tullow.
The debut is the West African nation bourse’s first since November 2008, Elizabeth Mate-Koli, head of listing at the exchange, said by phone yesterday. The company sold 3.5 million shares at 31 cedis each, raising 109.5 million cedis ($73 million), Tullow said on July 21.
“The listing will give visibility to Ghana’s market, given Tullow’s international appeal,” Kofi Yamoah, managing director of the exchange, said by phone yesterday. “It will also help to boost volumes of traded shares as traders in other markets start monitoring the Tullow shares on the Ghana market.”
