The steep rise in the valuation of the financial institution deviates remarkably from the average performance of FUGAZ, an acronym describing the top five Nigerian banks by market capitalisation. In the past seven years, the share prices of the leading banks appreciated by an average of 90 per cent as against over 200 per cent growth seen in FirstBank.
Deflated by the bank’s exceptional performance, Access Holdings, GTCO, UBA and Zenith stocks posted about 60 per cent growth. The performance of the entire banking sector also flattens out when compared with FirstBank, which raises questions about the fundamentals of the bank and its growth trajectory.
