Is Oando a value trap or a value opportunity? That’s the big question many investors refuse to ask objectively because emotions have completely taken over the stock.

Oando was listed on the NGX on 24 February 1992, and over the years the company transformed itself from a downstream petroleum marketer into an integrated energy company focused mainly on upstream oil and gas. Today, the company operates across three major segments: Exploration & Production, Supply & Trading, and Mining & Infrastructure Development. Management continues to speak about “creating stakeholder value,” diversification, and sustainable growth, but at some point investors need to stop listening to presentations and start reading the numbers.
This is a company currently carrying negative shareholders’ funds of about ₦554 billion, liabilities of ₦7.2 trillion against assets of ₦6.7 trillion, yet people still romanticize the stock because of potential, scrip issues, or the hope of dividends that haven’t been meaningful since 2014 when they paid just 60 kobo. Personally, a company running on this kind of leverage while continuously diluting shareholders feels more like financial survival mode than value creation. Sometimes it looks like investors are emotionally trapped because they’ve already lost too much money to walk away, so they keep convincing themselves dilution is “growth.” Meanwhile, nobody is factoring in the time value of money.
Let’s even put this into perspective. Oando hit an all-time high of ₦94.89/share on 30 May 2008 when the naira traded around ₦118/$, meaning the stock was effectively worth roughly 80 cents in dollar terms at the peak. Fast forward to September 2024, Oando rallied aggressively from ₦7.15/share to ₦84.55/share, but with the naira around ₦1,590/$, the stock was worth barely 5 cents in dollar terms. Hahaha… so despite all the excitement, the company still hasn’t recovered its real value in global terms.
Take a simple example. Let’s say Mr. Shingila bought 1,000,000 units of Oando at ₦8.88/share in the year 2000, investing ₦8.88 million. By 2008, when Oando hit ₦94.89/share, his portfolio was worth ₦94.89 million or approximately $804,000 at the exchange rate then. Life looked beautiful. Then reality happened. The stock crashed to around ₦24 in 2009 and spent years trading between ₦4–₦6/share while shareholders faced multiple rounds of dilution through bonus issues and rights issues. Assuming his holdings eventually became 3,000,000 shares from all the dilutions, today at around ₦46.95/share his portfolio is worth roughly ₦140.85 million. Sounds impressive in naira terms until you convert it back to dollars at ₦1,360/$, which leaves him with roughly $103,000 today.
Meaning Mr. Shingila is down almost 7x in dollar terms after holding for over two decades.
So the real question becomes: did Mr. Shingila invest in a value stock or a value trap? Because sometimes surviving on the chart is not the same thing as creating shareholder value.