Good morning and welcome to this week’s Bulls and Bears. This is a weekly thread i do on the US and Nigerian equity space. If you have any questions, feel free to tweet at me. You can also send an email to info@greentickertales.com or use the anon link.

This week’s version is abridged, for brevity sake. Id go into a bit more detail about the firms in question on Youtube and Spotify. 

Starting with the NGX. The All Share Index gained 0.92%. The index measures the average performance of stocks on the exchange.

Guinness Nigeria was the best performing stock last week. The stock appreciated by 28.6% opening at N143 and closing at N183.90, up N40.90.

Omatek led last week’s losers. The stock declined 18.18% opening at N1.32 and closing at N1.08, down N0.24

Learn Africa and Northern Nigeria Flour Mills were marked down. A markdown is when a stock’s price is adjusted for a dividend or bonus.

Learn Africa was marked down by N0.35 and ex dividend price was N7.25

NNFM was marked down by N0.25 and ex dividend price was N93.65.

Highlights of last week’s trading week were Zenith Bank and UBA dropping H1 2025 results.

Zenith video is up at the moment, and UBA video should be up sometime this weekend. Spotify episode on both banks will be up later today.

Zenith Bank H1 2025 

Zenith Bank H1 2025 results gross earnings went up, but profit dipped. 

Gross earnings went up by 19.96% from N2.1 trillion in 2024 to N2.5 trillion. 

Profit after tax fell 7.93% from N577 billion in 2024 to N532 billion in 2025. 

The drop in profit was due to a sharp rise in expected credit loss charges.

Cleaning the stable 

There was a sharp dip in impairment charges year on year. H1 2025 Impairment charge on financial and non-financial instruments was over N700 billion. The bulk of that was for loans. 

Key numbers: N1.1 trillion worth of loans written off. 

The bank has proposed a N1.25 interim dividend, up 25 kobo from the previous year. 

Qualification date is October 3, 2025 and payment date is October 10, 2025. 

UBA H1 2025

UBA fared slightly better. Profit was up year on year. Impairment provisions much slimmer.

The major downer in the earnings, is the Nigerian unit is lagging African operations. This is due to a combination of higher interest rate expenses and impairment losses. (Page 100)

UBA also gives an operational split. Corporate, Retail and commercial, Treasury and financial markets. 

Retail and commercial is lagging. Both are bundled together, so its hard to say which of the two are lagging.

What else happened last week? 

Sterling Holdco opened its public offer and Chams rights issue got extended. 

What’s happening this week?

Its a packed week, on an equity and macro perspective

Champion Breweries has a facts behind the figure event at the NGX today.

VFD Group has an emergency board meeting holding today. We should get some colour on their capital raise plans.

The CBN’s MPC will hold a meeting today and tomorrow, with the presser tomorrow. 

The wait for GTCO and Access Corporation H1 2025 results continues. 

Switching lanes to the US

Last week was a swell one following the interest rate cut by the Fed. The 3 major indexes closed in the green.

The S&P 500 index gained 1.2% 

The Dow gained 1.1%. 

The Nasdaq composite rose 2.2%. 

This week is a rather bland one in terms of earnings, Micron and Costco are the major names, that will be dropping theirs