NASD to float digital securities offering, awaits SEC approvals
Head, Research and Strategy, NASD OTC Exchange PLC, Oludare Fajimolu; Head Legal and Compliance, Koha Okukulabe; Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Eguarekhide Longe, Head, Human Resource and Administration, Margaret Fadipe and Head, Finance and Accounts, Kolawole Jiboku, during the Review of Half Year Performance of NASD in Lagos at weekend
…To pay cash dividend, bonus
By Peter Egwuatu
The NASD OTC Plc is on the verge of commencing digital securities offering in the third quarter of 2025, Q3’25, as it awaits the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC.
The NASD, has also concluded plans for the first time to pay cash dividend and bonus shares to its shareholders at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting, AGM scheduled to hold in August 2025.
Speaking, about the performance of the Company in the first half 2025, H1’25, Mr. Eguarekhide Longe, Managing Director/CEO, NASD OTC Plc, stated that the performance of the company in the review period was better than the same period 2024.
He said: “So we have 44 admitted companies, 46 securities. We still have the same number of companies at the end of June, but we’ve grown slightly, just a notch up. That Securities capitalisation number has moved up to about 2 points, it’s over N2 trillion now. But at the end of June it was N1.96 trillion. The enterprise portal, we’re working on quite a few transactions. We’re still working on those transactions, they’ve been moved up a notch. But you know that with smaller companies, it takes some time to build the business up to be able to take it to capital market funding.
“We have about a billion worth of projects that we expect to be able to execute within this year”.
Commenting on the proposed digital securities platform, Longe said: “ We have the digital securities platform. We had spoken about the first issuance coming out. We’ve approached the Securities and Exchange Commission with one of our issuances. We expect that’s going to happen in the quarter in which we are, quarter three. Quarter three started in June. We’ve done one month of quarter three. So we expect that we’ll be able to get our approvals through and we can launch our digital securities platform actively. And then we have our commercial paper.”
While highlighting the performance of the company he said : “ For the six months ended June 30, 2025, NASD reported a 308% increase in revenue, reaching N657 million, compared to N161 million in the same period last year. Profit Before Tax (PBT) rose dramatically by 646%, hitting N341 million versusa loss of N63 million in H1’24, signalling a strong financial rebound. Operational efficiency improved significantly, with the cost-to-income ratio declining to 48% from 139%.
”A standout figure in the period was originating income, which soared to N332 million, up from just N1.3 million in the previous year, an extraordinary 26,000% increase, driven by strategic focus and improved market engagement”.
