We typically do not look at private companies, but having previously looked at SunBeth, we entered a rabbit hole trying to find the next Presco / Okomu story.
Since we got access to its financials, we decided to give it a sneak peek by looking at its numbers strictly. I am also proudly a son of the Ile-Oluji Kingdom in Ondo State, so it probably explains how I found myself here.
Johnvents Industries Limited is a consequential agro-processing story with a vertically integrated cocoa and agro-commodity processor that has assembled 48,000 MT of processing capacity, crossed N810.8 billion in Group revenue in FY2025. It has done all of this with N330 billion in debt, a supercycle tailwind now fading.
The Group’s principal activities span the importation, processing and export of cocoa and agro-allied commodities, cocoa butter, alkalized cocoa powder, natural cocoa cake, cocoa beans, sesame seed, soya beans, chocolate beverages, palm oil products, and an expanding logistics arm through its subsidiary Haven Hauling Limited. As of the end of FY2025, the Group operates through seven active subsidiaries.
The macro drop – why cocoa, why now?
Nigeria is the world’s fourth-largest producer of cocoa, after Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Indonesia, and the crop remains one of the country’s most significant non-oil export earners. Yet for decades, Nigeria exported cocoa beans in raw form, surrendering the bulk of the value-added chain (butter, powder, liquor, chocolate) to European and Asian processors who then sold those derivatives back to African markets at a premium, as we did with oil before Dangote Refinery.
That structural inefficiency is precisely the gap that companies like Johnvents are designed to fill.
The global cocoa derivatives market was valued in excess of $18 billion in 2023 and is growing, driven by demand from the food and beverage, confectionery, and cosmetics industries in Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas.
Cocoa butter alone commands significantly higher margins than raw beans, and alkalized cocoa powder (used in premium confectionery and beverages) is a speciality product with strong pricing power.
Its 18,000 MT facility at Akure and 30,000 MT PCPIL plant at Ile-Oluji, together, form the largest combined cocoa processing footprint in Nigeria. Its 800 hectare farm at Ile-Oluji and Oda closes the loop at the supply end.
Johnvents Trading aggregates beans from local farmers through the LBA network. Haven Hauling moves the product. Johnvents Foods captures the domestic consumer.
The backward integration thesis is structurally sound and, in the context of Nigerian agribusiness, genuinely rare. The macro backdrop during which this infrastructure was assembled happened to be the most favourable cocoa price environment in a generation.
Cocoa futures surged from roughly $2,500 per tonne in early 2023 to a peak above $12,000 by early 2025, driven by consecutive West African crop failures, disease-related supply disruptions, and a speculative squeeze. That tailwind inflated every line on Johnvents’ income statement.
As of April 2026, cocoa trades at approximately $3,200 to $3,500 per tonne, down 57% from the peak, near June 2023 lows, with global surpluses of 287,000 MT projected for 2025/26 and a further 267,000 MT for 2026/27. ICE inventories are at a 19.5-month high.
The structural opportunity that motivated Johnvents’ capital build remains intact. The pricing environment in which it must service its debt has changed materially.
The Naira devaluation of 2023, which saw the official rate move from roughly N460/USD to above N1,500/USD, provided a significant revenue tailwind for FY2024, as export-denominated cocoa revenues translated at a far higher Naira equivalent.
FY2025 revenue growth of 68% was achieved in a more stable Naira environment, making it a higher-quality number in that specific respect.
The FY2025 revenue base was, however, earned when cocoa was still trading in the $6,000 to $8,000 range for much of the year.
Investors evaluating Johnvents today are pricing a business whose FY2026 revenues will be earned in a materially lower commodity price environment. That compression has real implications for top-line performance and debt service capacity.
It is also worth noting that lower cocoa input prices reduce Johnvents’ procurement costs alongside revenues; the processing spread, not the absolute price, is the true margin driver. A processor with the scale and efficiency to maintain its spread at $3,500 cocoa is not necessarily worse off than one operating at $7,000.
Financial performance – the Last 3 years was the easy part
Revenue: From N60bn to N811bn in three years
The Group’s revenue grew from N483.8 billion in FY2024 to N810.8 billion in FY2025, a 68% increase that completed a three-year run from N59.8 billion in FY2022. That is a 13x multiplication in three years, driven by a combination of genuine operational scale-up, the Naira devaluation translation benefit, and a global cocoa price environment that was, for much of the period, exceptionally favourable. 2 out of those 3 drivers have now evaporated.
The parent company (Johnvents Industries Limited on a standalone basis) reported N255.3 billion in FY2025 versus N230.6 billion in FY2024, an 11% increase that is more representative of underlying volume performance at the processing entity level. The headline Group figure is dominated by Johnvents Trading Services, which contributed N417.6 billion pre-elimination and whose revenues are closely correlated to cocoa spot prices.
The revenue segmentation is very important. Traded cocoa beans account for 34.2% of Group revenue. Cocoa butter accounts for 28.7%. Cocoa powder, a further 10.1%. That is 73% of Group revenue directly correlated to cocoa prices. The remaining 27% (sesame, soya, cashew, food, and logistics) is real and growing, but it cannot offset a 50% decline in the primary commodity.
We estimate that a sustained cocoa price of $3,000 to $4,000 per tonne, all else equal, implies a Group revenue base 35 to 45% lower than FY2025, call it N450 to N530 billion. That is still a large business. But it is a business with N330 billion in debt, N45.7 billion in annual finance costs, and a fixed cost base that has been scaled for supercycle volumes.
The 20.0% gross margin in FY2025 is the single most encouraging number in these accounts, and it carries more information than the revenue figure does.
A cocoa processor’s gross margin is fundamentally a processing spread (the difference between the landed cost of beans and the realised price of derivatives). During the supercycle, both moved violently, but a processor with forward procurement discipline and adequate storage can maintain or even expand its spread.
Johnvents’ 20% margin, held flat from FY2024 on a materially larger revenue base, suggests exactly that kind of operational discipline.
The bull case here is that processing margins are relatively stable across the commodity price cycle, making the business more resilient than a pure-play commodity position.
The bear case is that margins compress in a falling price environment as the benefit of high-priced forward positions cycles through, competition for available beans intensifies at lower prices, and the Group’s fixed financing costs consume a larger share of a smaller gross profit pool. Conservative modelling should assume 16 to 18% in FY2026.
The finance cost conversation
Finance costs grew from N17.5 billion in FY2024 to N45.7 billion in FY2025 (161% increase). Total funded debt at the end of FY2025 stood at approximately N330 billion: N228.9 billion in tenored bank facilities, N91.6 billion in commercial paper, and N9.5 billion in private notes.
The NICP/Murabaha transaction currently in the market will add a further N50 billion to this stack at profit rates of 21.5% to 23.5%. Finance costs of N45.7 billion represent 30% of EBITDA and 56% of PBT in FY2025.
The key variable is whether FY2026 revenues hold sufficiently to maintain EBITDA above N100 billion, which we consider the approximate threshold at which the current debt service load remains manageable.
PP&E grew from N255.0 billion at end-FY2024 to N384.5 billion at end-FY2025 (N129.5 billion addition in a single year), bringing the two-year capex total to approximately N291.5 billion. This represents 2 cocoa processing plants totalling 48,000 MT of combined annual capacity, 800 hectares of farmland, a logistics fleet, and food manufacturing equipment.
The bull case on this asset base is straightforward: this infrastructure cannot be replicated by a new entrant in under a decade, it operates across the full cocoa value chain from farm to consumer, and N384.5 billion in PP&E provides substantial asset coverage against the N330 billion debt load.
The bear case is about timing: this capex cycle was executed at supercycle prices, and the Group will now run these assets in a normalised commodity environment where revenue per tonne processed is materially lower. The factories are no less efficient, but the revenue they generate is smaller, while the finance costs are fixed. Without speaking to Management, we may be off by a mark here.
Cash flow: The reality check
Operating cash flow was negative N10.4 billion in FY2025, a figure that requires contextualising against N80.9 billion in reported PBT. The reconciliation is almost entirely working capital: inventories absorbed N35.4 billion, trade receivables N63.7 billion, and LBA prefundings N14.3 billion.
Working capital absorption of approximately N116 billion in a single year is the characteristic cash profile of a commodity processor scaling rapidly in a rising-price environment. You commit capital ahead of the harvest, hold inventory pending processing and export, and collect when the ships sail.
The bull case is that this working capital cycle is self-liquidating and that FY2026, with lower absolute commodity prices, will actually see improved operating cash conversion as the working capital built from FY2025 unwinds.
The bear case is that a business generating negative operating cash flow while reporting N80.9 billion in profit is structurally dependent on continuous external funding, and that the willingness of banks and CP investors to keep providing that funding at current terms will be tested by a lower commodity price environment.
Net cash increased by N14.3 billion during FY2025, and the Group closed the year with N37.9 billion, up from N23.7 billion at the start of the year. That trajectory is constructive and reflects a business that, despite its heavy working capital cycle and large debt load, is generating sufficient cash flows to improve its liquidity position.
The adequacy of this cushion in a normalised cocoa price environment is a legitimate question. N37.9 billion covers less than three months of annual finance charges. Investors focused on credit quality should form their own view on whether that liquidity buffer is sufficient given the short-dated nature of a significant portion of the debt stack.
The pioneer status advantage, a tax holiday worth mapping
Three entities within the Johnvents Group currently hold Pioneer Status under the Industrial Development (Income Tax Relief) Act: the parent company (Johnvents Industries Limited, effective January 2023 to December 2025), Premium Cocoa Products Ile-Oluji Limited (July 2024 to June 2027), and Johnvents Foods Limited (July 2024 to June 2027).
This means that the bulk of the Group’s revenue-generating capacity is shielded from corporate income tax for the duration of the pioneer periods.
Under the Pioneer Status framework, qualifying profits are transferred to a Section 17 Account rather than being distributed or taxed. At end-FY2024, the Group’s Section 17 account stood at N48.9 billion and the Company’s at N35.9 billion.
These are profit reserves that have been set aside in a tax-protected manner. The practical implication is that Johnvents’ reported effective tax rate at the Group level (0.1% in FY2024, per Note 14.2) dramatically understates what its tax burden would look like under normal circumstances, and you should model for a step-up in effective taxation from FY2026 onwards as the parent’s pioneer period expires.
The honest risk section, because every story has one.
Every investment story has features that attract capital and features that give it pause. What follows is an attempt to present both sides of the specific considerations we think are most material to an investment decision on Johnvents.
Cocoa price environment, tailwind becoming headwind
Cocoa futures currently trade at approximately $3,200 to $3,500 per tonne, down 57% from the 2025 peak. A sustained $3,000 to $4,000 price environment implies meaningful compression in Group revenues and earnings relative to FY2025.
We estimate Group revenues could normalise to N450 to N530 billion under this scenario, with gross profit at 16 to 18% margins, implying N72 to N95 billion. After finance costs of N45+ billion, PBT in this scenario could be in the range of N12 to N35 billion, materially lower than FY2025’s N81 billion but still positive and commercially viable.
The counterargument is that lower bean prices reduce input costs for the processing business, that the processing spread is more resilient than the absolute revenue figure suggests, and that Johnvents’ diversification across sesame, soya, cashew, and consumer foods provides some insulation.
Investors should run their own scenario/sensitivity analysis across a range of cocoa price assumptions. The appropriate range, given current futures market data, is $2,800 to $5,000 per tonne.
Leverage and refinancing, the central credit question
The debt structure has two distinct risk profiles. The N228.9 billion in tenored bank facilities (with a creditor register that includes IFC, BII, and over a dozen Nigerian commercial banks) is relatively stable. The N101.1 billion in commercial paper and private notes requires active rollover at maturity and is more sensitive to market conditions and investor appetite.
The bull case on leverage is that Johnvents’ 59% debt-to-equity ratio at the end of FY2025, combined with N384.5 billion in PP&E asset backing, provides adequate headroom for a large and well-capitalised business.
The bear case is that absolute finance costs of N45+ billion per annum leave a limited buffer if revenues compress, that short-dated paper rollover depends on sustained investor confidence, and that the treasury management burden of 27+ simultaneous credit facilities is operationally demanding.
Investors focused on credit quality should press management on the maturity schedule for the short-dated obligations and the committed standby facilities available.
Disclosures that require active monitoring
There are three governance-related disclosures that merit active monitoring rather than passive acceptance. The Management holds a 49% non-controlling interest in Johnvents Trading Services Limited, the entity responsible for N417.6 billion of Group pre-elimination revenue. This is disclosed in the accounts, and it is not unusual in founder-led Nigerian businesses. But it creates a structural dynamic in which the Management also benefits from the entity, whose transfer pricing with the parent company they also control.
Investors should satisfy themselves that inter-entity pricing is governed by an independent process and that the audit committee has specific oversight of related-party transactions.
Second, the intercompany receivables and payables on the uneliminated balance sheet are substantial, N114.2 billion in each direction. These net to zero on consolidation but represent large internal funding flows whose terms and conditions should be available to investors on request.
Working capital and LBA counterparty risk
LBA deposits (advances to local cocoa buying agents for pre-season procurement) stood at N53.8 billion at end-FY2025, up from N39.4 billion at end-FY2024.
This is the standard working capital model for Nigerian cocoa procurement: advance capital ahead of harvest, take delivery of beans, process and export. The model works well when farmers deliver consistently, and agents maintain their financial health.
Loss allowances have been established on these deposits, suggesting some historical credit issues, though the allowances have also been partially reversed, which is constructive.
The LBA book deserves specific due diligence: investors should ask about the average tenor of advances, the collateral structure (if any), and the track record of on-time delivery versus defaults at the agent level.
Pioneer tax expiry and revenue concentration
The parent’s pioneer expiry adds N6 to N8 billion in annual incremental tax from FY2026 (a manageable increment in a supercycle year, a more meaningful one in a normalised environment). Revenue concentration in cocoa at approximately 73% of Group revenues means that investors modelling FY2026 to FY2027 are, to a significant degree, making a view on cocoa price direction.
The partial mitigation is the 27% of revenues in sesame, soya, cashew, consumer foods, and logistics, which diversifies the earnings base and provides some insulation.
The backward integration strategy, owning the farm, the aggregation network, the factory, the logistics, and the consumer brand, also means that at any given cocoa price, Johnvents captures a larger share of the value chain than a pure bean exporter. That structural advantage is real, even if it does not fully offset the revenue sensitivity to absolute price levels.
The investment thesis: why we think this matters
Johnvents Industries sits at the intersection of three powerful structural trends: the global commodities super-cycle that has repriced agricultural derivatives; Nigeria’s long-overdue transition from raw commodity export to value-added processing; and the deepening of Nigeria’s capital markets as a financing platform for industrial companies that previously had no efficient access to institutional capital.
First, the physical infrastructure is real, and it is irreplaceable. N384.5 billion in PP&E (two cocoa processing plants totalling 48,000 MT of annual capacity, 800 hectares of farmland, a logistics fleet, food manufacturing equipment) cannot be replicated by a new entrant over a short period of time.
This is the kind of hard industrial asset that creates a durable competitive advantage in a country where the barriers to building physical capacity are, paradoxically, among the most reliable moats available.
Second, the processing spread business (buying beans, converting to butter and powder, selling derivatives at a premium) is structurally sound at any cocoa price level above approximately $2,500 per tonne. Johnvents is not a pure commodity price play; it is a processing margin play. The two are related but not identical. At $3,000 to $4,000, the business is less exciting than at $10,000, but it is not broken.
Third, the food business (Johnvents Foods) and the Nigerian consumer brand pipeline represent a long-duration growth optionality that is almost entirely uncorrelated to cocoa export prices. Neo seasoning, cocoa beverages, and the Oluji Pure Cocoa Powder brand. This is a separate investment thesis embedded in the Group, and it deserves separate attention.
Fourth, Johnvents is one of the very few Nigerian agro-processing companies that have actually accessed international development finance (IFC, BII, Afreximbank).
That creditor quality is a signal. The presence of these institutions on the cap table provides a degree of third-party validation of the business model that is worth noting.
For investors in the current NICP/Murabaha instrument, the specific credit case rests on a combination of asset backing (N384.5 billion in PP&E, N37.9 billion in cash), institutional creditor co-presence (IFC, BII, a 27-facility banking syndicate), and a self-liquidating working capital cycle that, if it completes within the 271 to 362-day tenor as designed, generates the cash to redeem the notes.
At 21.5 to 23.5% profit rates in Nigeria’s current rate environment, investors are receiving meaningful compensation.
The risk variables are the cocoa price (which affects the size of the working capital cycle being financed), the FX rate (which affects the Naira value of USD export receivables), and the reliability of the bean-to-butter-to-export cycle in the current supply environment.
The cocoa on the wall
There is an old Yoruba saying that the real value of a palm tree is not in the trunk; it is in everything that comes from it. Johnvents Industries is, in a very real sense, that palm tree of the Nigerian cocoa industry.
It is not just growing cocoa. It is processing it, packaging it, pricing it on international markets, shipping it, and building the logistics infrastructure to do so more efficiently with every passing year.
Three financial years tell a coherent story of ambition at scale: N94.9 billion in FY2023, N483.8 billion in FY2024, N810.8 billion in FY2025. The ambition is real. The infrastructure is real.
The value chain logic is sound. The questions that matter now are about the transition from supercycle conditions to normalised ones: whether the processing spread holds, whether the debt stack rolls smoothly, whether the governance structure sustains investor confidence, and whether the foods and diversified commodities businesses grow into a meaningful proportion of Group revenues. None of these questions has a definitive answer today.
What they have is a time horizon: the FY2026 audited accounts will be the first independent data point on how this business performs outside a commodity boom.
Until then, Johnvents is a company that rewards serious analysis, and serious analysis requires holding both the structural positives and the transitional risks simultaneously, without forcing a conclusion that the evidence does not yet fully support.
