FTN Cocoa Processors Plc delivered a sharp operational rebound in 2025, reflecting one of the most significant year-on-year improvements among Nigerian Exchange-listed agro processors.
The company’s share price climbed to N5.00 at year end from N1.82, a 174.73% gain, lifting its market capitalisation to N19.50 billion.
Investors responded positively to visible progress in cutting losses and bringing the business back under control, as the share price surge indicates.
Although the company is still in the red, the scale of improvement in revenue and earnings shows that FTN Cocoa is starting to move away from the period of deep financial stress that defined its recent past. However, concerns remain elevated.
For the nine months ended 2025, revenue surged to N2.19 billion from N637.51 million, while losses fell sharply. Loss before tax narrowed to N693.29 million from N12.58 billion, a dramatic reduction that reflects benefits from restructuring and tighter cost management.
After years of weak capacity use, rising debt, and shrinking margins, 2025 marked a shift in FTN Cocoa’s direction. The company entered 2024 with a badly damaged balance sheet, but 2025 shows the first real signs that operations are beginning to stabilise.
The huge drop in losses was driven mainly by stronger revenue and lower cost pressure, even though gross margins are still negative. What matters most is that losses shrank by about 18x just as revenue tripled in growth Year on Year (YOY), showing that the losses fell at a faster rate than revenue grew. This suggests that inefficiencies that once dragged the company down are gradually being brought under control.
This change in direction was enough to restore some investor confidence, as reflected in the sharp rise in the share price, even though the company is not yet profitable.
While the full-year result is yet to be released, FTN Cocoa’s 9M-2025 performance was not driven by sentiment alone. The financials point to measurable improvement.
For 9M-2025, the company recorded:
The sharp reduction in losses relative to revenue growth indicates a meaningful improvement in operating efficiency, even though the business has not yet crossed into profitability.
FTN Cocoa is still operating with negative gross margins. In 9M-2025, the gross margin stood at -23.63%, showing that costs are still higher than sales at the production level.
However, the key takeaway is not margin strength, but margin trajectory. In 9M-2025, the net loss margin improved sharply from an extreme -1,973.43% the previous year to -31.71%, while the gross margin stood at 65.43%, reflecting the collapse in earnings relative to revenue.
The improvement in 2025 indicates that each naira of sales now incurs far smaller losses compared with the previous year., which is exactly what a company needs to achieve before it can realistically return to profit.
This stabilisation lays the groundwork for a real turnaround.
FTN Cocoa Processors Plc is part of Nigeria’s agricultural and export value chain. Rather than simply trading raw cocoa beans, it processes them into cocoa-based products used by food and confectionery manufacturers in Nigeria and abroad.
FTN Cocoa Processors Plc is part of Nigeria’s agricultural and export value chain. Rather than simply trading raw cocoa beans, it processes them into cocoa-based products used by food and confectionery manufacturers in Nigeria and abroad.
As a processor, FTN Cocoa sits between Nigeria’s cocoa farmers and global chocolate manufacturers. This makes FTN Cocoa relevant to Nigeria’s push for non-oil exports, industrial growth, and job creation.
Even with its current financial challenges, a functioning cocoa processor helps keep more of the cocoa value chain within Nigeria rather than exporting raw beans alone.
Despite the operational improvement, FTN Cocoa’s balance sheet is still under heavy strain. As at 9M-2025, total assets stood at N21.56 billion, only slightly higher than N21.09 billion at the end of 2024. At the same time, total liabilities rose to N21.67 billion from N17.65 billion, while total borrowings reached N21.17 billion.
Most importantly, shareholders’ equity turned negative at -N108.32 million, down from a positive N3.44 billion the year before. The negative equity shows that past losses have completely eaten into shareholders’ funds.
Even though the company’s assets haven’t changed much, high debts and growing liabilities make it hard to stay financially flexible, showing just how important it is to keep improving earnings and fix the balance sheet.
FTN Cocoa’s cash flow in 2025 shows a meaningful improvement compared with the previous year. In the first nine months, the company generated N2.99 billion from its operations, a major turnaround from the N2.29 billion outflow in the same period of 2024, indicating that the core business is starting to produce actual cash.
Spending on property, plant, and equipment was modest, at N41.48 million, and net cash used in investing activities was N406.59 million, showing that the company is holding back on expansion to focus on stabilizing operations.
Financing activities accounted for N743.56 million, suggesting that the company is using some of its resources to service debts or restructure funding. By the end of September, cash balances had risen to N1.91 billion, up from just N76.39 million a year earlier, reflecting stronger liquidity and growing financial resilience.
FTN Cocoa has a relatively concentrated ownership structure, providing strategic direction during its turnaround phase.
Top shareholders include:
Together, these three shareholders control 64.85% of the company
The turnaround effort is being driven by a compact management team, led by:
How well this team manages debt, controls costs, and sustains revenue growth will largely determine whether the recovery can be maintained.
FTN Cocoa’s 2025 performance does not yet represent a profitability story, but it does mark a credible transition from collapse to stabilisation. The huge reduction in losses, strong revenue rebound, and better per-share numbers suggest that the company is moving out of survival mode.
For investors, FTN Cocoa is a turnaround story tied to Nigeria’s cocoa export value chain. Its future depends on how well the company can fix its operations, reduce its heavy debt, and start making better profits on each sale. If management gets these things right, this recovery could turn into real long-term value for shareholders.