MTN Uganda's sale of shares left over from its 2021 Initial Public Offering was oversubscribed by almost 100%, the telecom firm said on Thursday.

MTN Uganda is a local unit of South Africa's MTN Group and competes chiefly with the local unit of India's Bharti Airtel.

The company received applications for 3 billion shares against 1.6 billion shares on offer, it said in a statement. The shares sold represent 7.03% of the company's total equity.

The firm's 2021 IPO, in which it sought to sell 20% of its shareholding to expand local ownership to fulfil a regulatory requirement, was deeply undersubscribed.

Last month, MTN announced it was offering the shares left over from that IPO in a new sale on the secondary market at the Uganda Securities Exchange, where it is listed.

The share sale took place between May 27 and June 10. The company did not say how much it raised from the offer. MTN said it would issue an additional statement laying out the details of the offer results around Jue 20.

MTN has a subscriber base of about 15 million people and also offers mobile money financial services. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Hereward Holland and Tomasz Janowski)