Dangote Cement H1 2026: profit up 22.7%, but tax took a bigger bite
Pre-tax profit rose 34.4% to ₦981.4bn on more cement sold and a far smaller interest bill. A 63.6% jump in the tax charge held profit after tax to ₦638.5bn.
| Profit after tax | 638.5bn (+22.7%) |
| Net Cash | ₦215.2bn (from ₦682.9bn net debt) |
| Tax Rate | 34.9% (from 28.7%) |
Five things you need to know
- Revenue hit ₦2.51 trillion, up 21.4%, on 14.9 million tonnes of cement sold.
- Profit before tax rose 34% — but second-quarter profit after tax rose only 2%, because the tax charge more than doubled.
- No interim dividend was declared, against ₦502.6bn paid in the same period last year.
- Debt fell from ₦1.08 trillion to ₦581.0bn. The company now holds ₦215.2bn more cash than it owes.
- The businesses outside Nigeria generated 31% of revenue and 0.4% of profit.
Profit growth in the second quarter, measured two ways
The company earned ₦560.2bn before tax in the second quarter and kept ₦317.4bn. A year earlier it earned ₦418.1bn before tax and kept ₦311.2bn. Almost all of the growth went to the tax authorities.
Statement of profit or loss, page 3 of the filing.
So did the company do well or not?
It did well. That part isn't in doubt. Group revenue reached ₦2.51 trillion for the six months, up from ₦2.07 trillion a year earlier. The company sold 14.9 million tonnes of cement against 13.4 million tonnes, so it genuinely moved more product rather than simply charging more for the same.
Costs behaved too. Making the cement cost ₦924.3bn, up 8.3%, while revenue climbed 21.4%. When sales grow nearly three times faster than production costs, your widens — and it did, from 58.8% to 63.2%.
Then why did the second quarter's profit barely move?
Because of tax. In the second quarter of 2026 the group recorded a tax charge of ₦242.8bn on ₦560.2bn of pre-tax profit. A year earlier the charge was ₦106.9bn on ₦418.1bn. That is the entire difference.
43.3% of second-quarter pre-tax profit went to tax, against 25.6% in the same quarter of 2025. Across the full six months the rate was 34.9%, up from 28.7%.
Companies don't pay tax quarter by quarter on that quarter's profit. Under the accounting rule for interim accounts, they estimate the rate they expect for the whole year and apply it. If that estimate rises mid-year, the catch-up lands in one quarter and looks dramatic.
So 43.3% is very likely not a rate Dangote Cement will pay all year. What it does tell you is that management now expects to hand over a bigger share of 2026's profit than they expected in April. The filing gives no explanation for the change.
Rainingmoney's reading. The company published no commentary on the tax movement.
Where did every ₦100 of revenue actually go?
Derived from the statement of profit or loss, page 3, and cost notes on pages 12 to 13. Bars are scaled to ₦40 so the smaller lines stay readable. ₦0.42 of other income is not shown, so the column does not sum exactly to ₦100.
What changed since last year?
Three things, and only one of them made the news.
The company stopped paying dividends — for now
In the first half of 2025, Dangote Cement paid out ₦502.6bn to shareholders. In the first half of 2026 it paid nothing. Retained earnings swelled to ₦2.14 trillion. The cash didn't disappear; it stayed in the business.
It paid down almost half its debt
Borrowings fell from ₦1.08 trillion at the end of December to ₦581.0bn at the end of June. With ₦796.3bn of cash on hand, the company now holds more cash than debt — a net cash position of ₦215.2bn.
Money earned from sitting on cash collapsed
Interest and similar income fell from ₦113.3bn to ₦16.2bn, a drop of 86%. Interest costs fell by almost as much, so the net effect on profit was small — but it is a striking swing that nobody explained.
What caught our attention
The businesses outside Nigeria — 17 countries, from Senegal to Zambia — brought in ₦775.4bn of revenue, close to a third of the group total.
They contributed ₦2.8bn of profit. That is under half of one percent.
Nigeria is carrying this company. The Nigerian business earned ₦1.09 trillion of operating earnings on ₦1.81 trillion of revenue. The pan-African arm earned ₦136.6bn on ₦775.4bn — and once interest, currency losses and local taxes come out, almost nothing survives to the bottom line.
For a shareholder, that means the African expansion story is still, financially, a Nigerian story.
One more thing worth knowing before you look up the share price. Dangote Industries Limited owns 87.28% of the company. Stanbic IBTC Nominees holds another 5.23%. Everything available to ordinary investors on the exchange — the — is 5.73% of the company, worth ₦924.4bn at the 30 June price of ₦963.
The Scorecard
Each label comes from a fixed rule applied the same way to every company we cover. Strong means the measure improved materially against the same period last year. Steady means it held. Watch means it moved against shareholders, or moved without explanation. We publish no single score out of 100, because these categories don't trade off against each other in any honest way.
Did you follow all that?
Profit before tax rose 34% in the second quarter. Why did profit after tax rise only 2%?
The tax charge more than doubled, from ₦106.9bn to ₦242.8bn, taking 43.3% of second-quarter pre-tax profit instead of 25.6%. Everything above the tax line improved; the improvement was absorbed below it.
The company holds ₦796.3bn in cash and owes ₦581.0bn. Is that good or bad?
Good, on the face of it — it could repay every lender and still hold ₦215.2bn. The open question is what the cash is for. It paid no dividend this half, so shareholders are funding that cushion by going without.
A third of revenue comes from outside Nigeria. Why doesn't that make the company diversified?
Because revenue isn't profit. The pan-African businesses produced ₦775.4bn of revenue and ₦2.8bn of profit. If every operation outside Nigeria closed tomorrow, group profit would barely notice. Diversification only counts when it reaches the bottom line.
The Bottom Line
Dangote Cement sold more cement, made it more cheaply, and cleared half its debt. On operations, this was one of its better halves in years.
What shareholders received was flat second-quarter profit and no dividend. The gap between those two sentences is tax, and a decision about where cash should sit. Neither was explained in the filing — which makes the next quarter, and whether a final dividend appears, the thing worth waiting for.
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