KEY POINTS

• FirstHoldCo’s Q1 2026 profit before tax jumped 72.2 percent year-on-year to N321.12 billion, lifting the stock 10 percent.
• Chairman Femi Otedola’s 18.12 percent stake gained N49.6 billion in paper value, equal to roughly $34.4 million.
• The bank delivered the highest post-tax return on equity in the FUGAZ group at 31.6 percent during recapitalization.

Femi Otedola added roughly N49.6 billion to his paper wealth on Friday as FirstHoldCo Plc, the parent of First Bank of Nigeria, surged nearly 10 percent on the Nigerian Exchange after reporting a 72 percent jump in first-quarter profit, vindicating the chairman’s painful 2025 balance sheet cleanup.

Otedola’s 8.06 billion shares, representing 18.12 percent of FirstHoldCo, are now worth about N546.5 billion, or roughly $379.5 million at current exchange rates. The single-session gain converts to approximately $34.4 million at the naira’s prevailing rate against the dollar.

Now FirstHoldCo, long viewed as the laggard of Nigeria’s tier-one banks, sits at the center of an investor reappraisal that traders say has been overdue.

The numbers behind the move

Specifically, FirstHoldCo posted profit before tax of N321.12 billion for the three months ended March 31, up 72.2 percent from N186.47 billion in Q1 2025. Profit after tax climbed 56.5 percent to N267.8 billion. Gross earnings rose 26.8 percent to N942 billion. Non-interest income more than doubled to N219.2 billion.

Indeed, the result placed FirstHoldCo as Nigeria’s second-most profitable bank by absolute pre-tax profit in the quarter, behind Zenith Bank’s N360.91 billion and ahead of GTCO at N302.89 billion, Access Holdings at N272.2 billion and UBA at N160.65 billion.

The ROE that surprised the market

Moreover, the standout figure was return on equity. FirstHoldCo delivered a post-tax ROE of 31.6 percent in the quarter, the highest in the FUGAZ group of Nigeria’s five largest banks. The number lands as the bank completes its recapitalization, a process that typically dilutes returns by raising fresh capital before it can be deployed.

Producing a 31.6 percent ROE in those conditions, analysts said, was not something the market had built into its models.

The result follows Otedola’s decision in 2025 to absorb N830 billion in impairment charges and clear decades of legacy non-performing loans. Full-year 2025 profit before tax collapsed 70.5 percent to N235 billion in the process, a figure analysts at the time called necessary surgery.

Today, the surgery is reading clean. Furthermore, loan recoveries surged 1,570 percent to N19 billion in Q1 from N1 billion a year earlier, while the cost-to-income ratio improved to 45.2 percent from 53.8 percent at end-2025.

Additionally, Friday’s session fits a pattern for companies where Otedola sits in the chair. His prior major intervention at Geregu Power Plc culminated in a December 2025 divestment estimated at $750 million, after Geregu became one of the NGX’s strongest performers under his watch.

Meanwhile, FirstHoldCo’s price-to-book ratio sat at about 0.8 times before the rally, against GTCO at 1.4 times and Zenith at 1.06 times. Some analysts now describe the stock as one of the most asymmetric value plays on the NGX, according to Billionaires Africa.

FTSE catalyst ahead

The bigger setup sits on the horizon. Nigeria is scheduled for reclassification into the FTSE Russell Frontier Market Index on September 21, 2026, an event that typically triggers passive-fund inflows. Together with FirstHoldCo’s improving fundamentals, the reclassification gives institutional buyers reason to position ahead of the date.

Otedola became chairman in January 2024 and has been buying shares steadily since, partly through his investment vehicle Calvados Global Services Limited. Yet for now, Friday’s tape suggests the market is finally agreeing with his arithmetic.