AdeLeke (Branding, Marketing & Operations Mgt)

I need a female business mentor. Who do you people think can mentor me?

Every new order excites me. In 2025, I had my biggest ever budget. Hearing the new booking sound gave me joy. In 2026, I've the 2nd highest and lowest ever budget. The excitement for either brand is no less. If there is money to be made, I'll find it and scale it - at a cost.

Dangote Sugar is raising ₦486bn to deleverage its balance sheet. As of March 2026, the company’s total debt obligations stood at ₦628bn, on a total equity of ₦148bn. That is like a debt-to-equity ratio of 4x, way above the rule-of-thumb of 1x, well above the rule of If the equity raise is successful, debt levels will decline by over 70%, and the debt-to-equity ratio will reduce to 0.3x. By extension, finance costs could decline by as much as 43% (or less in FY 2026, as the cash won’t be fully deployed until Q3). Ultimately, DangSugar’s finance costs are likely to be at ₦30bn post-rights issue, compared to the current ₦120bn. That is close to an extra ₦100bn (or an incremental ₦5 per share) in profit before tax. DangSugar has struggled a lot in recent years. Once a darling of the market, the business spiralled to the other side. The old investment case broke down. The company used to be loved because it looked like a simple, dominant, cash-generating consumer staple that sells sugar, enjoys economies of scale, distributes dividends, and benefits from Nigeria’s large consumption base. But over time, the business became trapped between import dependence, FX volatility, high finance costs, weak consumer purchasing power, and delayed backward integration. The biggest issue is that DangSufar mostly sells in naira, but a major part of its cost structure is tied to the dollar. When the naira collapsed, the business's economics collapsed with it. Another twist is that the coy struggles each time crude oil prices are high. This is because attention shifts from raw sugar to ethanol production, as ethanol becomes more valuable when crude oil prices are high. The raw sugar shortfall increases DangSugar's input costs. The coy’s cost problem is structural. Nigeria does not produce enough sugarcane to fully feed local refining capacity, so Dangote Sugar still depends heavily on imported raw sugar. That means every naira devaluation immediately raises input cost. The coy can raise prices, but sugar is not a luxury product where consumers can absorb unlimited price increases, so margins get squeezed. The backward integration story has been slow. The long-term dream is to grow sugarcane locally, reduce dependence on imports, protect margins, and become an integrated sugar producer. But that takes land, irrigation, power, roads, capital, and time. Until local sugar production becomes meaningful enough, the coy remains exposed to imported raw sugar and FX shocks. I could have understood the extreme difficulty of executing an industrial-agricultural project in Nigeria, but then we saw an oil refinery through to completion. At Dangote Industries (group) level, I suppose priorities changed (Dangote Industries own 67% of Dangote Sugar). Possibly, capital allocation at the group level changed. Vetiva is the lead issuing house (surprising though. Stanbic IBTC used to be the go-to issuing house for all kinds of Dangote-related capital market activities). Anyway, Stanbic IBTC is also among the list of investment banks on this issue. Other names include Coronation Merchant Bank, First Capital, Meristem, Quantum Zenith, and United Capital. The size of this rights issue is quite large (for a non-bank), ranking behind Nigerian Breweries’ and International Breweries’ joint ₦600bn equity raise in 2025. Vetiva and Chapel Hill Denham led the capital raise, respectively. Despite the rights issue size, it is likely gonna be a soft work. Aliko Dangote will supply 72% of the required capital (Dangote Industries own 67%, Aliko Dangote directly owns 5%). Post-rights issue, we will see a strengthened Dangote Sugar balance sheet, and an immediate ₦100bn incremental profit. But a ₦100bn incremental profit on a ₦486bn incremental capital is 21% return. That’s fair but not sufficient. A lot of work remains to boost margins to historical levels. Will a deleveraged balance sheet help them to achieve that? The jury is out.

From June 1st, I will be heading the engineering and technical team of a health startup based in Lagos Nigeria (presently worth $20 million in valuation) I will be recruiting 10 people into the engineering team for the following positions. QAs Product Owners AI Engineers DevOps Software Engineers (Full Stack) That’s a lot of work for me to handle the recruitment process because we don’t have HR yet. I can only handle the technical interviews. Is there any recruitment agency you can recommend?

I don't think any song shook Nigeria the way Yahooze and Gongo Aso did in their time

Work-life balance is a myth.

15th goal of the year