Billionaire Kibunga Kimani buys Sh113 million Safaricom shares

John Kibunga Kimani. FILE PHOTO | POOL

Billionaire John Kibunga Kimani raised his stake in telco large Safaricom by 8.64 million shares to 27.7 million items within the six months to December 2023, becoming a member of traders who’ve taken benefit of the inventory’s cheaper price so as to add to their holdings.

The extra shares are valued at Sh113.12 million, going by the corporate’s closing worth of Sh13.10 a share on Friday.

The corporate’s shareholder register for December reveals Dr Kimani’s further stake cemented his place because the telco’s second-largest East African particular person shareholder. His stake is barely surpassed by the 40.41 million items held collectively by Chirag Menesh Solanki and Kalavati Menesh Solanki, who reduce their holding by 131,000 items between June and December 2023.

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Dr Kimani’s stake within the firm is now valued at Sh362.4 million on the present worth, whereas the Solanki stake is price Sh529.3 million, which is the equal of 0.1 p.c of the telco’s whole valuation of Sh524.9 billion.

Retail traders holding as much as 100,000 shares every, who had progressively reduce their stake in Safaricom between the agency’s 2008 preliminary public providing and 2019 on revenue taking, have been rebuilding their place during the last two years as the corporate’s share worth developments downwards from highs of Sh40 and above.

Safaricom’s share worth fell by 20.6 p.c to Sh13.90 between June and final December, and with overseas company traders lowering their publicity to the inventory, native traders stepped in so as to add to their stake within the telco.

The regulatory filings present that the quantity of shares held by East African particular person shareholders rose to 1.715 billion by the top of December from 1.653 billion in June 2023.

Native company traders —whose classification consists of anchor homeowners Vodafone Kenya Ltd and the Nationwide Treasury— noticed their stake rise from 34.88 billion shares to 35.22 billion. International particular person traders additionally joined within the shopping for, elevating their holding to 53.16 million items from 45.66 million in June 2023.

However, overseas institutional traders reduce their stake to three.08 billion items from 3.49 billion items in June.

Safaricom is the biggest listed agency on the Nairobi Securities Trade (NSE) by market capitalisation, variety of traders and issued shares, making it accessible to each retail and institutional traders throughout a variety of possession bands.

The corporate’s IPO in 2008 noticed 896,213 new brokerage accounts opened as retail traders lined as much as take a slice of the telco.

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This greater than doubled the variety of accounts on the NSE to 1.7 million, with small traders making use of for 22.6 billion items of the telco’s shares or 464 p.c of what was allotted for them.

Over the long run, the numbers of these holding 100,000 shares and under have dropped considerably, from 822,122 in March 2009 —a 12 months after the telco’s IPO— to 533,172 in December 2023.

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