FirstHoldCo Plc has done it again. In today’s trading, the parent company of First Bank of Nigeria pushed past N6 trillion in market capitalisation, a first for any Nigerian banking group, extending a rally that has made the 132-year-old lender the undisputed heavyweight of the NGX.
With shares changing hands at N136.50 and roughly 45.48 billion units outstanding, the group’s market value climbed to approximately N6.21 trillion, a figure that not only sets a new industry record but widens FirstHoldCo’s lead over its closest rivals, Zenith Bank and Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO), both of which it overtook earlier this year.
What makes today’s milestone remarkable is not just the number itself, but the speed with which it was reached. FirstHoldCo crossed the N5 trillion threshold for the first time only twelve days ago, on July 22, when its shares traded between N112 and N113 in the wake of blockbuster half-year results.
This milestone came after shares had closed at N105.00 the day before, extending a rally that began following the release of half-year 2026 financial results. Since then, the stock has added roughly N1.2 trillion in value in less than two weeks, a pace that has left analysts and rival lenders scrambling to keep up.
The climb has been steep all year. First HoldCo had already overtaken Zenith Bank in July to become Nigeria’s most capitalised banking stock, and by month’s end it had pulled decisively clear of the pack: Zenith Bank closed at N5.2 trillion and GTCO at N4.82 trillion, while United Bank for Africa and Access Holdings trailed at N2.08 trillion and N1.47 trillion respectively.
At today’s price of N136.50, the stock’s year-to-date gain now stands at 184.97%, and it has more than doubled from 143.53% since the end of June alone.
The engine behind the surge has been an extraordinary turnaround in profitability. FirstHoldCo reported a record profit before tax of N653.54 billion for the first half of 2026, up 83.5% year-on-year from N356.15 billion, while profit after tax rose 81.57% to N526.13 billion.
The momentum was especially pronounced in the second quarter, where profit before tax nearly doubled to N332.42 billion from N169.67 billion in the same period of 2025.
That performance marks a sharp reversal from the group’s difficult 2025, when a roughly N748 billion one-off impairment tied to legacy non-performing loans dragged full-year profit before tax down more than 71%.
Chairman Femi Otedola had described that write-down at the time as a deliberate “clean house” exercise rather than a sign of underlying weakness, and the market’s subsequent re-rating of the stock suggests investors have come to agree.
Otedola’s combined interest in FirstHoldCo increased to 20.40% as of June 30, 2026, up from 18.12% at the end of March and 15.95% a year earlier, driven largely by growth in his indirect holdings, which rose to 6.03 billion shares in June 2026 from 4.80 billion in March and 3.47 billion in June 2025.
His combined holding reached 9.28 billion shares by the end of June, up from 8.06 billion three months prior, an increase of about 1.22 billion shares in a single quarter.
Otedola’s continued accumulation, alongside the group’s improving fundamentals, has been widely cited by market watchers as a signal that has drawn in fresh institutional and retail buying.
FirstHoldCo’s ascent has reshuffled the pecking order of Nigeria’s banking elite.
For years, GTCO and Zenith Bank traded places as the NGX’s most valuable financial institutions; FirstHoldCo’s emergence as the clear frontrunner and now the first to cross the N6 trillion mark marks a symbolic changing of the guard for the country’s oldest bank, one that spent much of 2025 under a cloud following its balance-sheet cleanup.
Whether the rally has further room to run, or whether today’s N6 trillion mark represents a near-term peak, will likely depend on the group’s next set of full-year guidance and broader sentiment on the NGX, which has itself been volatile in 2026.
For now, though, FirstHoldCo stands alone at the summit of Nigerian banking, a position few would have predicted at the start of the year.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
FirstHoldCo’s rise to N6.21 trillion, Nigeria’s first banking group to hit that mark, is fundamentally an earnings story: a record N653.54 billion half-year profit before tax (up 83.5% YoY) turned a bank that took a major loan-impairment hit in 2025 into the NGX’s best-performing stock in 2026, up nearly 185% year-to-date.
Chairman Femi Otedola’s rising stake (now 20.40%) has reinforced investor confidence, but the core driver is the fundamentals: strong earnings recovery, not speculation, is what’s powering the rally.
