Lafarge Africa to cut debt by US$270m

Lafarge Africa will use some of the funds raised by a NGN131.6bn (US$415m) rights issue to cut debt by US$270m, as reported by Reuters.

The company inherited US$507m in shareholder loans and US$88m of third-party foreign currency debt when it acquired UNICEM in 2015. This debt would expose Lafarge Africa to a foreign currency loss due to the sharp fall in value of the naira. However, the rights issue is expected to help reduce the debt by almost half.

Lafarge Africa announced a pretax loss of NGN22.8bn for the full-year period of 2016. This result had been partly attributed to the foreign currency debt.