The supermarket is offering two billion ordinary shares at Sh7.50 each, representing 50 per cent of its issued share capital. Investors poured into Safaricom’s Ziidi Trader platform on Tuesday as QuickMart Supermarket opened its initial public offering (IPO), signaling a strong retail appetite for a slice of one of Kenya’s fastest-growing supermarket chains.
A reliable source monitoring activity on Ziidi Trader told The Star that the platform recorded traffic of more than 100,000 users at a given time during the day, with the heaviest activity between 10am and 2pm. “I noted a huge traffic between 10 am and 2 pm. I’m not the right person to divulge this, but it surpassed the traffic witnessed when Kenya Pipeline and Family Bank IPOs were launched,” the source said.
Safaricom, the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) or the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) has not officially confirmed the figures. Ziidi Trader was launched by Safaricom in February in partnership with the NSE and operates under CMA oversight. It allows M-Pesa customers to buy and sell NSE-listed shares through their mobile phones without having to go through the traditional process of opening a brokerage account.
The platform accounts for a significant share of NSE trading activity, underscoring the potential of mobile investing to widen participation. The supermarket is offering two billion ordinary shares at Sh7.50 each, representing 50 per cent of its issued share capital.
The minimum investment is 500 shares, meaning an investor can enter with Sh3, 750. The offer is targeting at least Sh15 billion and is the latest major equity offering seeking to deepen public ownership of a Kenyan business. Unlike a primary capital raising, the QuickMart offer is a sale by existing shareholders.