Cutix Plc, a highly successful indigenously promoted company, has beckoned on government to patronise its made in Nigeria cables to further boost production and growth of the economy.

The call is coming from the Company at the backdrop of the flag-off activities to mark its 40th anniversary celebration with the theme: “40 years of striving for a commonwealth.”

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD/CEO) of the company, Mrs. Ijeoma Oduonye, while responding to questions from Vanguard said: “We do not have high patronage of our products from government; just a few of them like, Edo State, Anambra State and Ebonyi State make use of our product in their projects. So we call on governments across the country to patronise our products which is of international standard and even the third best in the world.

‘‘We have been talking to some other State governments on this. We believe that government patronage will further boost our production output, create more employment opportunities and boost the country’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP.”

Commenting on source of its raw materials, she said “We import more of our raw materials like copper and aluminium because we are yet to have high quality in the country but we have been engaging the players in the sectors so that we can boost our local contents.

On the anniversary, Oduonye, said the theme was specially styled to highlight the continuously improving returns to stakeholders of the company since inception.

Oduonye, disclosed at a press conference in Lagos over the weekend, that “Cutix Plc reached the milestone of four decades of operation as a company on November 4, 2022.”

Going down the memory lane, she said : “ The company was conceived in 1981 by Engr. (Dr.) Ajulu Uzodike and was incorporated on November 4, 1982 as a Private Limited Company with about 18 friends and relations invited by the founder to pull resources together and generate a start-up capital of about N400, 000 (four hundred thousand Naira only).

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 to 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.”

Also speaking, 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.

Nwosu said, besides this, the company has been declaring dividends every year from 1989 as well as declared 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 to grow consistently as the profit after tax of the firm surged yearly.