First HoldCo hints at possible delay in 2025 audited financial results publication

FIRST HoldCo Plc has notified the investing public that the release of its Group Audited Consolidated and Separate Financial Statements for the year ended December 31, 2025 may be delayed as the company awaits final regulatory approval.

In a notice to Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), signed by Group Company Secretary of First HoldCo, Mr Abiola Baruwa, the financial services holding company said it is currently in the process of securing the final approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for its 2025 audited financial statements.

The company explained that the regulatory review process could lead to a delay in the publication of the results, which were originally expected to be released within the standard reporting timeline.

According to the statement, the company has already informed the exchange of the situation and obtained approval for an extension to publish the financial statements, subject to receiving the CBN’s final approval.

First HoldCo also reminded its insiders that the closed period declared from January 1, 2026 will remain in effect until 24 hours after the audited financial statements are filed through the NGX Issuers’ Portal, in line with the exchange’s listing rules governing insider trading.

The financial services group is chaired by Olufemi Otedola, while Adebowale Oyedeji serves as the group managing director.

READ ALSO: Rising investor interest in First Holdco lifts shares back to pre-selloff levels

First Holdco financials

According to the unaudited financial statement, the company reported a loss of N337.540 billion in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2025 after a gain of N185.466 billion in the corresponding period of 2024. Shareholders bore the brunt of the poor performance in Q4, suffering a loss of N407.835 billion over the period.

The company suffered N748.125 billion impairment loss for the whole of 2025 and N459.206 billion for the last quarter of 2025. This, in simple terms, means that loans had been granted to entities to the tune of N748.125 billion but they did not repay them. As a result, Nigeria’s oldest bank decided to write them off within a year.

First Holdco had an outsized ‘other operating expenses.’ Ordinarily, this should not worry anybody, but the size of the expenses is a source of concern. The financial statement shows that other operating expenses jumped 44 percent to N809.362 billion in full-year 2025, from N563.706 billion reported in the correspondng period of 2024.

“What is the component of this mammoth number? To put this huge amount as ‘other operating cost’ does not sit well with me,” said a Lagos-based investment analyst, who pleaded anonymity. “It needed to be disaggregated to show investors what constitutes the costs. That is what transparency implies.”

Similarly, the group paid an income tax of N176.344 billion in the full-year 2025, as against N132.977 billion in the corresponding period of 2024. While the tax might have emanated from disallowable expenses, prior period adjustments, or deferred tax write offs, analysts wondered why a company whose shareholders suffered humongous loss in Q4 (N407.835 billion) would agree to pay that amount of tax over a year. Some said the company should have paid less than half of the tax, considering the circumstance in which it found itself.

More so, First Holdco spent a lot of money on keeping assets that might have reached their zenith alive. In 2025, it spent N151.164 billion on the maintenance of those assets after burning N134.76 billion on those assets in 2024. Financial analysts said this amounted to wasting money on assets that were not yielding sufficient revenue to cover the cost of their maintenance, wondering why the company did not outrightly write them off to save costs.

“This should have been written off,” said a former banker and financial analyst, Mr Abimbola Ojudu. “You do not keep maintaining assets that aren’t yelding anything.”