Billionaire Femi Otedola's First HoldCo stake hits $641 million as shares hit record high

Femi Otedola has made about $221 million in three weeks without buying a single share.

The value of his stake in First HoldCo, the parent of First Bank of Nigeria, climbed to about $641 million (N890 billion) on Friday, after the stock surged the maximum permitted 9.97% to an all-time high of N95.95 and led the gainers on the Nigerian Exchange. His 9,277,792,037 shares, a fifth of the entire company, were worth $420 million as recently as June 26. The market has done the rest.

The stock has become the most compelling trade on the Nigerian market, and its chairman is the man with the most riding on it.

The reward for buying when others sold

Otedola's fortune in the bank is the product of patience and timing rather than the week's frenzy. He emerged as First HoldCo's largest shareholder in 2021 and took the chairmanship in January 2024, then spent the following eighteen months adding to the position in deliberate increments. He paid N40.06 a share in a N14.8 billion purchase last December, N79 in a N43.4 billion open-market deal in May, and N44 in a N29.6 billion private placement in June. The bulk of his holding was assembled between N40 and N44.

At Friday's close of N95.95, almost every share he owns sits deep in profit. The position, which cost him a running total of more than N250 billion, money he has stressed repeatedly is his own with none of it borrowed, is now worth N890.2 billion. The distinction about debt is not incidental. Otedola built and nearly lost an earlier fortune in oil, undone by leverage when crude prices collapsed the previous decade, and he has rebuilt this one determined not to repeat the mistake.

The progression of the stake reads like a ticker. It was worth about $420 million on June 26 at N62.00, roughly $530 million on July 15 at N79.35, and about $641 million on Friday at N95.95. Same shares, rising price, a fortune compounding in real time.

A rally running against the tide

What makes the run remarkable is the market it is happening in. Nigerian equities shed nearly N13 trillion in value across June and early July as investors fled blue-chip names, yet First HoldCo climbed through the sell-off, more than doubling from its N47.90 opening price in January and rising more than 170% over the past twelve months. It has outpaced both the NGX Banking Index and the broader All-Share Index, and done so while much of the market bled.

The buying has been ferocious. On July 9, a record 1.26 billion units changed hands in a single session, the heaviest volume in the stock's history, in a block trade the market read as institutional money taking a strategic position. Demand has not let up since, with each session drawing fresh interest at prices that keep setting records. The stock now trades at close to sixteen times earnings, among the richest multiples in the banking sector, a measure of how much conviction is priced in.

Two forces are driving it. The first is anticipation of second-quarter results due July 24, after a first quarter in which First HoldCo beat on every important line, lifting pre-tax profit 72.2% to N321.1 billion and profit after tax 56.5% to N267.8 billion, while driving its cost-to-income ratio down to 45.2% from 52.3%. The second is a structural catalyst with a date attached. Nigeria is scheduled for reclassification into the FTSE Russell Frontier Market Index in September, an event expected to pull passive institutional money toward the exchange's largest and most liquid stocks. First HoldCo is among the most heavily traded names on the market, and investors are buying ahead of the index flows rather than waiting for them.

The capital play beneath the price

The rally is inseparable from the transformation Otedola has engineered inside the bank. First HoldCo is raising fresh equity toward a target of N1 trillion in paid-up capital, double the Central Bank of Nigeria's N500 billion minimum for lenders with international operations. The June private placement lifted the group's share capital to about N525.6 billion, already above the regulatory floor, and shareholders have approved raising up to a further N253 billion, with the proceeds funneled into First Bank to fortify its balance sheet.

The strategy is beginning to draw outside validation. First Bank was named Nigeria's Best Bank for Customer Experience and Best Bank for Large Corporates at the 2026 Euromoney Awards for Excellence, recognition of an operational turnaround at the country's oldest lender, founded in 1894, that the share price has been pricing in for months.

The next test arrives on July 24. Investors have bid the stock to record after record on the wager that the second quarter will echo the first, and a repeat would justify the climb. A softer number, against a price that has run far ahead of earnings, would hand the profit-takers their moment, and Otedola's paper gains could give back ground as quickly as they were made.

He has shown no sign of taking money off the table. For two years his answer to every rally has been to buy more, and on Friday the market pushed the stock to its highest level in history, betting alongside the man who already owns the most of it.