By Omodele Adigun
Finance charges are expected to claim 76 per cent of VFD Group’s operating profit forecast at N15.8 billion for the third quarter, which would keep profit well below the first quarter mark for the second quarter running.
The proprietary investment company is experiencing rising finance charges, which are impinging on margins and limiting profitability. Quarterly finance expenses on the company’s N123.5 billion borrowings increased from N9.8 billion in the first quarter to N11.3 billion in the second quarter and are expected to have grown further to N12 billion in the third quarter, according to company estimates.
Conversely, profit delivery dropped from N3.5 billion in the first quarter to N1.5 billion in the second but is expected to increase to under N2.7 billion in the third. The net profit margin is thinning from 17.7 per cent in the first quarter to 12.2 per cent at the half-year and is expected to step down further to 11.9 per cent in the third quarter.
The company’s earnings forecast for the third quarter ended September 2025 targeted operating income of N21.5 billion and operating profit of N15.8 billion. Finance expenses are expected to consume nearly N12 billion, and less than N2.7 billion is expected to reach the bottom line.
The company’s half-year results show that while profit is growing well year-on-year, it isn’t growing good enough in the year following a high-grade bonus issue of 4 for 1. A sharp drop in earnings per share is therefore to be expected for the company this year.
Gross earnings amounted to a little over N41 billion at the half mark, which is an increase of 44 per cent year-on-year. The third quarter is expected to top up by N22.7 billion to the region of N64 billion for the nine-month period.
The closing quarter is expected to contribute N24 billion to gross income to close the year in the region of N88 billion, which would be flat on the closing level of N87.8 billion revenue in 2024.
Effective management of costs apart from rising finance charges is however, enables management to grow the bottom line ahead of revenue on a year-on-year basis. Net gains on financial assets of N2.9 billion at half year helped to moderate the impact of drops in net foreign exchange gains and other components of other income.
There is significant cost saving from operating expenses, which grew by 11.6 per cent year-on-year to N10.8 billion at half year. That powered an increase of over 64 per cent in operating profit to stand at over N27 billion at the end of June 2025.
The strong growth in operating profit helped to moderate the impact of an increase of over 60 per cent in finance charges to more than N21 billion at the half point.
Cost savings enabled an increase of 80 per cent year-on-year in pre-tax profit to over N6 billion at half year and a 93.7 per cent rise in after-tax profit to N5 billion over the same period.
With a profit delivery of N2.7 billion expected from the third quarter, the company is expected to close its nine-month operations with a bottom line in the region of N7.7 billion. The final quarter is expected to contribute about N2.5 billion to profit, according to the company’s forecast.
The full-year profit outlook, therefore, is N10.2 billion for VFD Group, which will be an increase of 17.4 per cent over the closing profit of under N8.7 billion in 2024.
The company closed last year’s trading with earnings per share of N5.16, but with increased volume of shares from the bonus issue, earnings per share are expected to drop to N1.34 for the full year.
More than 70 per cent of last year’s profit was generated in the second half due to fair value gains on investment property. In the event of an unforeseen recurrence, the company’s closing profit and earnings per share may be better than forecast.
VFD Group returned to profit in 2024 from a loss of N750.4 million in 2023 and has so far shown strength good enough to maintain profitable operations for the second year.
