Business
Mutual Benefits Assurance’s annual profit jumps 45% amid boost in insurance revenue
Mutual Benefits Assurance reported on Friday a 45 per cent increase in net profit for the 2025 financial year, receiving a major boost from its insurance business.
Shares in the insurer had gone up by 9.5 per cent on Lagos’ Customs Street as of 10:32 West Africa Time, following the news.
Insurance service result leapt 718.9 per cent to N8.8 billion, according to its audited financials, easing the blow that a slide in net investment income would have had dealt on earnings.
The net investment income of the underwriter dropped by 11.1 per cent in the period under review after incurring N659.7 million in foreign exchange loss in contrast to a gain of N5.3 billion posted a year earlier.
Insurance revenue climbed by 19.6 per cent to N80 billion, with Nigeria contributing more than three-fourths of that sum, while Niger and Liberia – other markets where the company operates – accounted for the rest.
The results also showed that motor insurance remains the biggest contributor to insurance revenue pool of the insurer, whose underwriting operations span oil & gas, aviation, agriculture, marine and life among others. Revenue from motor insurance stood N26.2 billion, up from N17.9 billion a year earlier.
Apart from assurance business, the company has operations in real estate, microfinance as well as oil & gas exploration and production.
One of the key highlights of the reasonably strong performance was the N9.2 billion recorded as insurance service result before reinsurance contracts held, which compares to a negative position of N1.2 billion reported in 2024, when soaring insurance service costs wiped out insurance revenue.
READ ALSO: CBN retains interest rate at 26.5%
Mutual Benefits Assurance has proposed a dividend per share of N0.04 for the review period, translating into a potential payout of N802.5 million, two times what it paid shareholders for 2024.
Strengthening profit, the company cut back other employee benefit expenses by 7.8 per cent and other operating expenses by 40.5 per cent.
Profit before income tax rose by 47.6 per cent to N17.4 billion, while profit after tax advanced to N16.4 billion.
Total assets expanded by 19.8 per cent to N176.2 billion, driven by an increase in financial assets at amortised cost.
Dangote Refinery has completed the endorsement of the offer documents for its initial public offering, putting it on course to launch the $1.6 billion public equity sale, regarded as Africa’s largest ever, next week.
Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man and owner of the 700,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) plant, led the sign-off ceremony in Lagos on Monday in the presence of advisers and other parties to the pan-African offering, which aspires to source about N2.2 trillion from investors.
The minimum subscription of the offer is 10 ordinary shares, translating to N5,250, Mr Dangote told the event.
Lagos-based Vetiva Advisory Services Limited is coordinating the capital raise.
The ceremony follows a key approval by the capital market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), last week, with 4.1 billion shares up for subscription at N525 ($0.40) per unit.
The maiden share offer values the refinery at nearly $50 billion, and plans to plough the proceeds into doubling the current capacity of the facility, which lies on a 6,180-acre expanse on the outskirts of Lagos, to 1.4 million bpd.
That could lift the market capitalisation of the Nigerian Exchange by more than one third when the shares are listed on the local bourse later this year.
A cross-border listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the continent’s biggest bourse, is in the works, just as the company is giving thought to quoting the stock in Egypt, Kenya, Ghana and Rwanda.
In July, a private placement heralding the IPO raised $2.5 billion from institutional investors and HNIs, oversubscribed by 270 per cent.
Unmet demand from the private share sale could find its way into the IPO, which, long before its approval was announced, had drawn vast interest across Nigeria, where the SEC was impelled in June to stop all the marketing related to the share sale.
The regulator’s action followed reports that many retail investors, including those with little or no knowledge of how equity investment works, were already opening trading accounts ahead of the IPO.
Nevertheless, investor appetite is growing fast beyond retail level, with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) which according to Bloomberg on Monday, was said to have opened conversations with the refinery towards buying a stake in it.
The global media outlet, citing interviews with sources, noted that an insider at ADNOC said Dangote Refinery has also received approaches from other big investors.
READ ALSO: AFC leads investment in Dangote Refinery’s $2.5bn private placement
Potential model for aspiring companies
The IPO’s launch on 14 September will ride on the improved liquidity Nigeria expects to attract from foreign portfolio capital, following the country’s restoration to frontier market status by FTSE Russell after a near-three-year downgrade that bogged it down under unclassified market status, consequently deterring international investors.
Likewise, an IPO on this scale could offer a template to similarly big Nigerian companies raring to become public quoted firms and, by so doing, unlock access to financing through the capital market.
State-owned energy company NNPC Limited has been fiddling with the idea of going public and holding an IPO since 2021 after transitioning into gaining limited liability status, reviving the talks around the push last November.
The company, whose public image has long been marred by opacity in its operations and lack of transparency in publishing its accounts, may borrow a leaf from Dangote Refinery’s listing.
In June, the refinery, which commenced production in January 2024, toppled the US to become the biggest external supplier of jet fuel to Europe, maintaining the feat in July.
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