By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Last week, on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), traders witnessed an unusual trading volume around shares of Omoluabi Mortgage Bank Plc.
What caught the attention of the investing community was that the volume of shares of the firm bought on that day, which was nearly 800 million units, comprising one-sixth of the total share outstanding of the mortgage bank.
Omoluabi Mortgage Bank, according to data obtained by Business Post from the stock exchange, has shares outstanding of 5 billion and last Tuesday, when this huge transaction occurred, the investor mopped up a total of 796,453,653 units of the company’s stocks from the market. The transaction was executed in a single deal.
Before then, the previous times shares of the lender were traded on the NSE were on October 25, 2019 when 120.5 million units were bought at 55 kobo; October 24, when 272 million units were purchased at 55 kobo; October 23, when 122.5 million units were acquired at 55 kobo each; October 22, when 174.3 million units were sold for 50 kobo per unit; and October 21, when 110 million units were traded at 55 kobo each.
But during last Tuesday’s transaction, the investor, whose identity could not be immediately ascertained as at the time of filing this report, bought shares of the company at 55 kobo each.
What is causing a part of the investing community to raise an eyebrow is if Omoluabi Mortgage Bank has attracted a new investor to turn fortune of the company around?
If this has happened, it means there might be a possible shake-up in the board composition of the company as the new buyer will likely want to have his interest represented on the board of directors to guard his investment.
From our analysis, the transaction last Tuesday cost not less than N438.1 million. The market capitalisation of Omoluabi Mortgage Bank as at the close of business last week stood at N2.750 billion.
Omoluabi Mortgage Bank is a company with a Below Listing Standard (BLS) status on the NSE because of a free float deficiency of 1.96 percent, according to the latest data from the NSE. However, the management of the company are already in talks with the stock exchange on how this issue would be resolved.
