GTCO successfully price $105m primarily equity offering on LSE

Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) Plc, said it has successfully priced its new $105 million primary equity offering on the London Stock Exchange’s (LSE) main market for listed securities.

The announcement is coming a day after it announced in a regulatory filing the  plans to raise $100million new ordinary shares, proposed cancellation of Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) and admission of shares listings on the LSE.

On the raising gross proceeds of $105 million, the group general counsel/company secretary, Mr. Erhi Obebeduo in a signed statement posted on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), said a total of approximately 2.29 billion new ordinary shares in the company will be issued in US dollars at a reference price of N70.00 per share ($0.0459).

As gathered by WESTERNPOST, the stock price of GTCO on July 04, 2025 closed for trading at N83.20 per share on the NGX.

He, however, noted that concurrently with the offering announcement, the company also gave notice of its intention to cancel the listing of its existing GDRs on the certificates representing certain securities category of the official list of the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the admission to trading of GDRs on the LSE’s main market for listed securities.

Obebeduo  in his statement explained further that, “In  place of the GDR listing, the company intends for all of the ordinary shares of the company to be admitted to the equity share (international commercial companies secondary listing) category of the official list of the FCA and to trading on the main market for listed securities of the LSE.

“The offering is conditional upon, amongst other things, admission becoming effective and upon the underwriting agreement not being terminated in accordance with its terms.

“The company is not making any arrangements for dealing prior to admission in respect of the shares being issued in connection with the offering.

“It is expected that admission and unconditional dealing in the shares will become effective on or before 8:00 am (UK time) on July 9, 2025 under the ticket”GTHC “.

“Following the cancellation of the GDRs listing, the company intends to change the ticker symbol for the shares from”GTHC ” to”GTCO ” and will issue a separate announcement in due course to that effect.”

According to him , upon admission, the company’s issued share capital is expected to be 36,425 ,229,514 shares, revealing that  the number of shares in public hands would be 36,386,972,252 shares or approximately 99.9 per cent of the company’s issued share capital.

“The cancellation of the GDR listing is expected to take effective on later than July 31, 2025,” he added.

On GTCO’s moves, a group of analysts at EFC in a report said they would have liked to have seen a bigger deal size ($180-200millioon), maintaining that they were relieved it did not happen.

“With 2024FY CAR at 39.3per cent  and a clean back book following years of aggressive provisioning (to eliminate forbearance), there is no need for a bigger deal size in our opinion.

“Especially when bankers are already chasing after the Group CEO, Mr. Segun Agbaje trying to sell him everything (pension firms, insurers, other banks, payment companies etc.). Our worry is that, if GTCO had raised more, it might have been pressured into building another pan-African financial services provider with offices in over 30 countries across SSA…

 “…we would rather that this did not happen and GTCO remains focused. Nigeria still offers depth, and we’d rather see capital discipline than a stretched footprint. On a wider offering of financial services in its core markets, we welcome this, but would also caution against overpaying.

 “On the deal size, we understand from conversations with some traders that they would have liked to have seen more liquidity in London. While we appreciate that, it should be noted that, GTCO has been trading $1.23million a day in Nigeria over the past 3 months, and this has been good.

“We have seen much harder times in the past, so even if 20per cent ($21million) of the money raised in London was going to be actively traded, this could have a meaningful impact on average daily liquidity, even if small by global standards,” the firm noted.

It added that, “To conclude, we would note that with this raising, GTCO should have around N507billionn in share capital and premium, which makes it fully compliant with the CBN’s minimum capital requirement of N500 billion.

“We are also impressed with their ability to pull this deal off with a sole global coordinator and bookrunner. Just maybe, this deal is what will bring Nigeria and the SSA opportunity back to the international markets.”