A major driver of the Nigerian stock market’s impressive 18.95% return in the third quarter of 2025 was the strong performance of a select group of heavyweight stocks known as SWOOTs.
In Q3, 9 out of 22 SWOOTs gained more than 20%, while 16 advanced between 15% and 20%.
Altogether, 17 of them closed the quarter in the green, highlighting the breadth of positive sentiment among Nigeria’s largest corporates.
By definition, SWOOTs (an acronym for Stocks Worth Over One Trillion Naira) are companies whose market capitalization exceeds N1 trillion.
Given their enormous influence, any sustained movement in SWOOTs tends to shape the overall market direction.
Hence, their impressive showing in Q3 was powerful enough to lift the Nigerian All-Share Index to its third-best quarterly performance since 2020.
This work ranks the top 10 best-performing SWOOTs in Q3 2025, focusing on share price appreciation rather than size, with each company maintaining a market capitalization above N1 trillion.
Here are the top 10 best-performing SWOOTs:
United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) ranks 7th with a 22% Q3 return, the best-performing Tier-1 bank on the list.
As of September 30, UBA had a market capitalization of N1.77 trillion, with 41,039,305,642 outstanding shares.
The stock opened at N35.40, trading 1.6 billion shares, and closed Q3 at N43.20.
A 40.21% surge in July pushed it to a high of N49.60 before mild corrections in August and September.
- For H1 2025, UBA reported a pre-tax profit of N388.4 billion, a slight dip from N401.5 billion in H1 2024, supported by 32.89% growth in interest income to N1.3 trillion.
Year-to-date, UBA shares are up 26.6%.
