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Cutix Plc, a successful indigenously promoted company, has flagged off activities to mark its 40th-anniversary celebration with the theme: ‘40 Years Of Striving For A Commonwealth’.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD/CEO) of the company, Mrs Ijeoma Oduonye, said the theme of the anniversary was specially styled to highlight the continuously improving returns to stakeholders of the company since its inception.
Mrs Oduonye, who disclosed this at a press conference in Lagos over the weekend, said Cutix Plc reached the milestone of four decades of operation as a company on November 4, 2022.
Going down memory lane, she said the company was conceived in 1981, by (Dr.) Ajulu Uzodike and was incorporated on November 4, 1982, as a Private Limited Company with about 18 friends and relatives invited by the founder to pull resources together and generate a start-up capital of about N400, 000.
This was followed by a public offer in 1986 through which the company raised N1,664,000 from the capital market.
The company’s shares were subsequently listed on the Second-Tier Securities Market of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on August 12, 1987, a development which made the company become the first non-government company, East of the Niger, to be quoted on the Exchange.
In 2008, it organically migrated to the main board of the NGX first-tier securities market and currently has about 8,495 shareholders.
She said the company has braved all odds to add tremendous value to a commonwealth pool shared by all stakeholders of Cutix, including shareholders, the board of directors, management staff, other staff members, the government, customers, neighbours and the general public.
The CEO said Cutix Plc, known for the exclusive quality of its cables and wires, has continued to blaze the trail in the manufacturing sector amidst the over-the-roof challenges bedevilling the sector in Nigeria.
She listed some of the challenges faced by the company over the years to include unstable government policies, multiple taxation, poor infrastructure, difficulty in sourcing raw materials due to high rates of foreign exchange and the influx of substandard products in the market.
She said the company has sustained its performance because “It remains steadfast to its corporate mission of powering and illuminating the world while aiming at actualising its corporate vision of being one of the top three providers of electrical energy products and services in the world.”
According to her, “Without prejudice to anyone or company, Cutix is already ranking as the best in terms of product quality in the country and surely not far off in respect of the top three in the world.”
The CEO also attributed the success of the company to the charter it put in place at its inception, which, among others, included: being very profitable, fast growth, high quality, ethical, socially responsive, international (with Nigeria as its home base) manufacturer of electrical wires and cables and move rapidly to exploit emerging technologies and capabilities in product improvements and diversification.
Others are to use mainly Nigerian manpower and as much Nigerian value added in materials and technology; use chiefly internally generated funds to grow and provide returns fairly to all stakeholders, including founder, co-founders, owners, directors, management, employees and third parties like suppliers, distributors, government and public.
The founder of the company, Dr Uzodike who shared his experience of running the company for several years to produce commonwealth for its stakeholders, which is the core vision of the company, remarked that it is now time for discerning citizens of the country to sit together and ask questions on how to create commonwealth for the nation, like what obtains in China and other developed countries of the world.
Also speaking, the chairman of the company’s board of directors, Ambassador Okwudili Nwosu, said the theme of the anniversary was chosen because “An investment in Cutix grows with the investor.” He added that an equity investment of N10,000 in Cutix in 1983 is presently worth N89,108,928.
Ambassador Nwosu said, besides this, the company has been declaring dividends every year since 1989 as well as declaring bonuses nearly every three years in the ratio of one for one, one for two, and one for three.
He said most of the bonuses were one-for-one, thereby making the value of annual dividends received by shareholders grow consistently as the profit after tax of the firm surged yearly.
He explained that the feat would not have been possible without the great vision of the company’s founder, Dr Uzodike, who decided to leave Raychem Corporation, a major international manufacturer of aircraft and military wares and accessories, in 1981 to set up an indigenous firm to manufacture electrical cable that later metamorphosed into Cutix Plc in the wake of the Nigerian civil war.
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