Safaricom’s #ticker:SCOM share price rally has created an additional 1,500 millionaire investors in just over five years.
The telecoms operator now has at least 10,000 investors holding shares worth more than Sh1 million each, up from an estimated 8,500 in May 2015, analysts and regulatory filings show.
The rising number of high-net-worth investors in the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm has been helped by the rally in its share price over the years.
Safaricom’s stock, which has appreciated to the current all-time high of Sh39,has seen the holdings of any investor with at least 25,700 shares rise in value to top the Sh1 million mark.
The number of the high-net-worth investors excludes top institutions like the National Treasury, Vodafone Group Plc and Vodacom Group Limited. The analysis is based on disclosures of the telco’s ownership distribution and the share price whose rally has enabled more investors to hit the millionaire’s club.
Stockbrokers estimate that about half of the 21,000 investors, who own in excess of 10,000 shares, have at least 25,700 shares.
This indicates that at least 10,000 investors own Safaricom shares worth more than Sh1 million.
Safaricom’s stock traded at Sh15.85 at the end of May 2015 when it took a lot more shares – 63,100 units — for one’s holdings to breach the Sh1 million mark.
Most of the Safaricom millionaires are Kenyans but foreign individual investors, including citizens of neighbouring countries such as Uganda and Tanzania, are also in the list.
Growth in the number of the telco’s high-net-worth investors is a reflection of both its long-term share price gains and more wealthy investors flocking to the country’s most profitable company.
Safaricom’s share price has gained 680 percent since the telco went public on June 9, 2008 via an initial public offering at Sh5 per share.The company’s Sh18 billion interim dividend that will be paid on March 31 will take its cumulative cash distributions in its life as a publicly traded firm to Sh375 billion.The entry of Safaricom to the stock market has supplanted other blue-chip firms in terms of concentration of high-net-worth shareholders.Cigarette manufacturer BAT Kenya, for instance, is now estimated to have 1,000 individual shareholders with stakes valued at more than Sh1 million.Safaricom also holds one of the largest concentrations of super-rich investors on the NSE.John Kibunga Kimani, for instance, holds 16.2 million shares worth Sh631 million based on recent disclosures. Moses Thara is another high-net-worth investor in Safaricom who has 10.1 million shares with […]