GTCO, UBA Shareholders to See Higher 2025 Dividends on Excess Capital Post-Recapitalization

Shareholders of Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) and United Bank for Africa (UBA) listed on the NGX, could see higher dividends payout for the Full Year 2025 period as a result of excess capital holdings by the firms.

The market expectation is that the boards of both institutions, having secured their capital base for the next phase of growth, will adopt a more liberal dividend policy for the Full Year 2025 results.

“We maintain our view that GTCO and UBA, both sitting on excess capital, could potentially increase dividends significantly. GTCO stated in their Half Year 2025 results conference call, that it intends to increase the absolute Full Year 2025 Dividend Per Share (DPS). We believe all the banks will return capital to shareholders, including Zenith, Accessco and UBA, which, as per their respective statements, are compliant with the CBN’s loan forbearance directive and single obligor limit requirement,” Timothy Wambu an analyst at Absa said in a recent note to clients.

“We especially see UBA and GTCO as capable of ramping up dividends given their robust capital adequacy ratios.”

Commercial banks with international authorisation are required to have minimum paid up capital (share capital + Share premium) of N500 billion.

Those with a national authorization are required to have a minimum paid up capital of N200 billion. At the time of publishing, UBA was yet to announce the results of the second tranche of its rights issue programme, which closed in September that targets to raise cN157bn, by offering 3.2bn shares at a price of N50.00.

GTCO raised N161bn/USD105mn after successfully listing 2.3 billion new shares on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in July 2025. The additional capital will boost their already excess capital positions.

UBA successfully raised N235 billion in the first tranche of its capital raising programme, offering 6.8 million new shares priced at N35.00.

The second tranche of the rights issue was rolled out on 30 July 2025 and sought to raise N157 billion, offering 3.2 billion shares priced at N50.

If successful, UBA’s total paid up capital will increase to N506bn (excluding offer costs), meeting the regulatory minimum paid up capital for commercial banks with international authorisation of N500 billion.

The total capital ratio (CAR 2) stood at 37.1% in Half Year 2025 (minimum requirement of 16%) and stands to be boosted by the second tranche.

GTCO’s total capital adequacy ratio stood at 36.2% at Half Year 2025 versus a minimum requirement of 16% and will have increased further after the listing of new shares at the LSE.

UBA and GTCO currently have dividend yields of 9.22% and 8.21% respectively.

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