First HoldCo 9M Profit Surges 65% to ₦744.5bn as Fees and Trading Offset Weaker Interest Income

Profit Up, Core Margin Down

First HoldCo's nine-month results tell two stories at once. The headline is a sharp earnings rebound: profit after tax climbed 65.12% to ₦744.45 billion and pre-tax profit rose 60.84% to ₦911.24 billion, a dramatic turn from the profit decline the group reported in the same period of 2025. Underneath, however, the group's traditional engine weakened. Interest income fell 8.69% to ₦2.09 trillion, funding costs rose, and net interest income — still the largest single income line — contracted 16.02% to ₦1.26 trillion from ₦1.50 trillion a year earlier.

What closed the gap was everything else the HoldCo owns. Fee and commission income rose 40.92% to ₦367.06 billion, lifting net fee and commission income 48.09% to ₦316.42 billion, as payments, asset management and other non-bank businesses inside the group scaled. Trading swung even harder: instruments held at fair value through profit or loss produced a ₦104.58 billion gain, against a ₦72.77 billion loss in the prior period, turning a ₦177 billion year-on-year swing in the group's favour.

A Bigger, More Liquid Balance Sheet

The balance sheet expanded quickly without a lending spree. Customer deposits grew by more than ₦4 trillion in nine months to ₦22.91 trillion, up 21.33%, while loans to customers rose just 4.77% to ₦9.39 trillion — a deliberately conservative pace that kept the loan book small relative to the deposit base. Total assets climbed 18.15% to ₦32.19 trillion, with much of the deposit inflow parked in liquid assets and investment securities rather than new credit.

Risk costs moved the right way at the same time. Impairment charges on loans fell 28.32% to ₦207.09 billion from ₦288.91 billion, even as the loan book grew, suggesting the asset-quality clean-up that weighed on the group's 2025 results is continuing to ease. Equity rose 16.97% to ₦3.86 trillion, strengthening the group's internal capital generation at a time when Nigerian banks remain under regulatory pressure to build capital buffers.

What It Means for Investors

The results mark a genuine change in how First HoldCo makes money. A year ago the group's profit depended heavily on interest income earned in a high-rate environment; this period, fees, commissions and trading income carried the growth while lending margins compressed. That diversification is the core of the HoldCo model the group has been building around FirstBank, and the nine-month numbers are its clearest demonstration yet.

The open question is durability. Trading gains are inherently volatile, and a ₦1.26 trillion net interest income line that is still shrinking will need the deposit franchise to be converted back into quality earning assets if earnings are to hold this level. For now, though, the group has shown it can grow profit by two-thirds in a period when its core lending income fell by a sixth — and it has done so while cutting impairment charges and adding more than ₦4 trillion in deposits.