How 30 Nigerian companies performed since IPO listing

Some Nigerian companies that entered the capital market decades ago now trade at prices running into hundreds or thousands of naira per share, while others listed in the past decade have either gained significantly or fallen below their original listing prices.

An examination of selected companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) shows wide differences in share-price performance across sectors and generations of listings.

Nestlé Nigeria, one of the oldest names on the Nigerian bourse, is currently quoted at N2,900 per share on the NGX. The company was originally offered at N1 per share in 1978, according to historical market data supplied for this analysis.

Okomu Oil Palm has similarly recorded a substantial increase in its quoted share price. Its historical IPO price was N1.50 in 1978, while the NGX currently shows the stock at about N1,276.20.

UBA, whose shares were initially offered at N2 in 1970, currently trades around N46 per share, while GTCO, which listed at N2.50 in 1999, is currently around N137.30.

Zenith Bank, another major financial institution, was listed at N10.90 and is currently quoted at about N132.

The figures illustrate how some of Nigeria’s longest-listed companies have accumulated substantial nominal increases in their share prices over several decades.

Newer listings tell a different story

The performance of more recent listings has been mixed.

MTN Nigeria entered the Nigerian market at a listing price of N90 per share in 2019. The NGX currently quotes the stock at about N850.

BUA Foods, which listed in 2022 at N40, is currently around N760.60, according to NGX data.

Aradel Holdings, listed in 2024 at N702.69 based on the figures provided for this analysis, is currently quoted at about N1,530.

Airtel Africa, which joined the Nigerian market in 2019 through a cross-border secondary listing following its international IPO, was priced at N363 per share in Nigeria. The Nigerian Exchange’s listing documentation confirms the N363 price.

The company’s Nigerian listing was one of the major additions to the market in 2019, alongside MTN Nigeria.

Not every listing has gained

The market has also produced companies whose shares currently trade below their original listing prices.

Transcorp Power, listed in 2024 at N240 per share based on the figures supplied, currently trades at about N178.

Honeywell Flour Mills, which entered the market at N8.50 in 2009, is currently around N15.65.

Chams, listed at N2.50 in 2008, currently trades around N3.49.

The performance of individual stocks therefore varies considerably, even among companies that came to the market during similar periods.

Historical market records also show examples of major IPOs that subsequently traded below their original prices. A 2020 Nigerian capital-market report, for instance, recorded Transcorp Hotels at N10 at listing compared with N4 at the time of the report, while Honeywell Flour Mills had fallen from N8.50 to N1.17.

Other stocks worth examining

Other Nigerian companies that can be included in a broader historical stock-performance dataset include Dangote Sugar, Transcorp, Ecobank Transnational and Airtel Africa.

Dangote Sugar listed in 2007 at N18 per share, according to historical Nigerian capital-market data. Transcorp listed at N7.50 in 2006, while Ecobank Transnational listed at N6.90 the same year.

The NGX currently quotes Dangote Sugar at about N71.50, Transcorp at N37 and Ecobank Transnational at N66.50.

These figures show why the Nigerian equities market cannot be described simply as a story of stocks either “making investors rich” or “crashing after IPOs”. Individual companies have followed very different trajectories.

What the numbers do — and do not — tell us

A comparison of the original listing price with the current quoted price can provide a useful starting point for investigating long-term market performance.

But the raw price difference does not represent an investor’s actual return.

For example, a shareholder who bought a stock decades ago may have received dividends, bonus shares or participated in rights issues. Companies may also have undergone share splits or other corporate actions that changed the number of shares held.

Inflation and changes in the value of the naira also mean that N1 invested several decades ago cannot be compared directly with N1 today without adjusting for purchasing power.

The Nigerian Exchange itself provides historical and current equity-price data, including information on opening, high, low and closing prices, while its X-DataPortal provides historical equity data for analysis.

That makes the next layer of analysis more revealing: rather than simply asking which companies have the highest current prices, investors and researchers can examine total shareholder return, adjusted share prices, dividends, bonus issues, market capitalisation and inflation-adjusted returns.

Such an approach would provide a more accurate picture of what happened to an investor who bought shares at the point of an IPO and held them until today.