Next Capital
repeats the year 2017
In 2021, brokerage income stands at around 85% of total operating revenue, while investment banking only makes up 15%
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y all accounts, it looks like an astonishingly good year for Next Capital. In its recently released financials to the Pakistan Stock Exchange, the company’s turnover jumped to Rs421 million from just Rs 246 million, while its net income shot up to Rs 81.9 million, compared to just Rs17.7 million the year prior. That’s a jump of nearly 4.5 times. But the increase does not look as impressive when one zooms out. In fact, this is the second best pair of results that the company has ever earned. In 2017, the company had a net profit of Rs108 million, the highest it has ever been. That year also boasted the highest revenue, at Rs424 million. So the question is now why the company did well this year - it is what happened between 2018 and 2020 that forced it to catch up? But first, some context on Next Capital. The investment bank and equities brokerage house is the brainchild of Najam Ali. Perhaps most famously before Next Capital, Ali was the
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chief executive officer at JS Investments Limited. During his tenure at JS Investments, the company achieved the highest rating of AM2 Plus in the industry, and remained the largest asset management company in the private sector, with Rs300 million assets under management. He has also been the founding chief executive officer of the Central Depository Company (CDC), Pakistan’s first and only securities depository. While at CDC, he also led the development and implementation of the National Clearing and Settlement System, which is the centralized clearing system in Pakistan for all the stock exchanges. The point of listing these resume activities is to say that when Najam Ali decided to start Next Capital in 2009, people paid attention. It helped that he was able to also snag other members for Next Capital form the industry: such as Zulqarnain Khan,direc-
tor, who had previously worked at JS Global Capital Limited, and at AKD Securities, Ali Akhter Ali, the man aging director for Capital Markets, who had previously worked at TPL Life Insurance and JS Investments. Next Capital was quick to list: while started in 209, it was listed on the exchange in 2012. That year, its turnover stood at Rs41 million, cand crossed the Rs100 million mark in 2014, and the Rs150 million mark just a year later. It was in 2017 that the company did astoundingly well. According to that year’s annual report, where total revenue increased by 116%, the brokerage revenue has grown by 77%. The company has basically increased its presence significantly in foriegn equity brokerage. There was only one ominous line from
