Last week, Nigerian stocks fell by 1.2 per cent, marking its third week of broad retreat in the wake of the introduction of a T+1 settlement cycle in June.

The Banking Index was worst hit, receding by 10.5 per cent, followed by the Insurance Index. FTSE Russell, a global provider of stock market indexes, during the week placed its recent upgrade of Nigeria from unclassified to a frontier market on hold on fears that the country’s new rule, compelling international investors to prefund their accounts before transactions, may be deterring.

Failure by stock market authorities to respond swiftly to address the issue may leave stocks hammered further by apathy and capital flight from foreign investors.

This week, increased positioning, notably in stocks that pay dividends at least twice a year, could be witnessed as the market awaits the release of half-year corporate results.

PREMIUM TIMES has assembled some stocks with sound fundamentals, adopting rigorous approaches to save you the risk of picking equities at random for investment.

The pick, a product of an analytical market watch, offers a guide to entering the market and taking strategic positions, with the expectation that selected stocks will record reasonable price appreciation with the passage of time.

This is not a buy, sell or hold recommendation but a stock investment guide. You may need to involve your financial advisor before taking investment decisions.

NEM Insurance

NEM Insurance tops this week’s list for its strong fundamentals. The net profit ratio (NPR) of the underwriter is 9.6, while the price-to-earnings (PE) ratio is 8.5x. Its 10-day relative strength index (RSI) is 27.4.

Custodian Investment

Custodian Investment appears on the pick on the basis of its attractive fundamentals and for trading below its intrinsic value. The NPR of the company is 26.3, while the PE ratio is 5.3x. The RSI is 8.4.

Fidelity Bank

Fidelity Bank makes the selection for trading below its intrinsic value. The lender’s NPR is 16, while the PE ratio is 3.3x. Its RSI is 27.4.

READ ALSO: Cornerstone Insurances 2025s profit drops more than half as FX gains dry up

United Capital

United Capital makes the cut for its vibrant fundamentals. The NPR of the company is 51.2, while the PE ratio is 10x.

Aradel Holdings

Aradel Holdings features on the pick for its strong fundamentals. The energy company’s NPR is 57.4, while the PE ratio is 14.2x. The RSI is 17.

Meta and Snap rolled out new smart glasses last month, the latest sign that the industry is racing to put a camera and an AI assistant onto users’ faces. As the fast-growing market heats up, upstarts like Even Realities are muscling in on the giants.

Even Realities, a three-year-old Shenzhen-headquartered startup, has raised $150 million in a pre-Series B round led by Meituan and previous backer Tencent; the round valued the startup at $1 billion valuation. Founder and CEO Will Wang told TechCrunch that while rivals chase camera-equipped devices built around content capture and AI, his company is betting on display-first glasses that beam information straight into the wearer’s line of sight without giving up privacy.

Even’s earlier backers are mostly high-profile China names including Sequoia China.

Even was started by ex-Apple engineers in 2023. CEO Wang worked on the Apple Watch and iPhone; other co-founders came from tech, and two came from luxury eyewear companies, including Lindberg. The startup moved quickly, launching its first product, Even G1, in 2024 as what Wang calls the lightest waveguide smart glasses then on the market.

Even blew past its own 10,000-unit target to become the first company in the category to sell more than 10,000 pairs, according to the company CEO. It raised money faster than expected, and swelled from 30–40 staff in 2024 to 300–400 today.

The startup’s latest flagship, Even G2, hit the market last November and skips the camera entirely. Instead, a heads-up display built into the frames feeds information to the wearer, controlled by a companion ring, the Even R1, that users tap and swipe to navigate.

Removing the camera is an important part of Even’s privacy philosophy, though not the entire story, Wang continued. Smart glasses, he said, are probably the most personal computing device people will ever wear. Worn on the face all day, they have to feel comfortable to both the wearer and those around them, so privacy is designed into both the hardware and the software. Voice features like translation transcribe audio into text rather than storing recordings; user data is encrypted, and the infrastructure is built to meet Europe’s strict privacy standards, Wang added.

Even’s power users lean hard on Conversate, a copilot that reads a conversation in real time, explaining unfamiliar jargon or feeding follow-ups on the fly, then syncing a summary to their phone.

Still, Even has invested most heavily in optics (the display and overall optical performance), which Wang says is what separates smart glasses from other consumer electronics.

“With a phone or a watch, the display is just a conventional OLED or LCD screen. Smart glasses are the first product category to rely on optical displays, which require an entirely different technology stack; you have to design the microchip, the optics, and the waveguide together. That’s where we’ve invested the most,” Wang said.

The company developed a proprietary optical technology called Even HAO, or Holistic Adaptive Optics, an end-to-end design that integrates the microchip, waveguide and prescription support from the start, rather than combining components designed separately.  

More than half of Even’s users sit in the U.S. — its fastest-growing market — and so does the bulk of its developer community. The company doesn’t sell in China yet, even though it manufactures there across several factories; its main markets are the U.S., Japan, South Korea, the Middle East, and Europe. “The demand there is significant, so we want to make sure we’re prepared first,” Wang said.

Even sells near the top of the category on price and still moves real volume, making it a profitable player in the space, Wang said. “Most of our customers are male professionals between 30 and 50 years old. We ran a survey and found that about a third of our users are company executives,” he added. The frames retail for $599 before tax; prescription lenses or the ring tack on another $200–$300, pushing the average order to roughly $1,000.

This article has been updated with information on previous investors from the company.