Safaricom Post-IPO Ownership

While we are still caught up in the Safaricom euphoria, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look into the ownership of Safaricom after it has gone public. While the government of Kenya still insists that there are currently two owners of Safaricom, namely Treasury and Vodafone (K) Limited, we all know that there is a lot that they are not telling us. I won't go into the details of Vodafone's (VKL) composition as this has been discussed extensively in other blogs.

Break-down of Issued Ordinary Shares

Owner	Outstanding shares	Percent
Public/IPO	10 b	25
Vodafone PLC	14 b	35
Mobitelea	2 b	5
GoK	14 b	35
Total	40 b	100

So what happens on 10:30 am May 30th June 9th 2008 when Safaricom's shares start trading under the ticker SFCOM on the Nairobi Stock Exchange?

Nothing extraordinary apart from the fact that 10 billion new shares will be available for trading.

What about Mobitelea's 2 billion Safaricom shares?

These will be available for trading on the 25th 11th of September 2008 (give or take a few days). All 2 billion of them. According to the prospectus, VKL has agreed to a lock-up period lasting 180 days from the date of publishing the IPO prospectus. This is assuming that the first day of the offer as the publishing date.

The float on the NSE will remain 10 billion shares until such a time that either the government, Vodafone Group PLC or Mobitelea offloads more shares into the market.

Only after the said date is Mobitelea's stake fair game. Until then, Mobitelea's owners have to contend with dividends. Of which they picked 200 million shillings from last years 4 billion shillings yield. The year before that, they pocketed another 150 million shillings from the 2.99 billion shillings that was paid out. And if Safararicom makes 17 billion shillings this year, Mobitelea may earn 280 million shillings going by the 33% dividend payout ratio.

VKL stands to be dissolved after the IPO. This will allow Mobitelea to quietly and forever disappear from the horizon. This is likely to happen especially now that the possible owners of Mobitelea (Moi, Gideon Moi, Nicholas Biwott and Joshua Kulei) do not see each other eye to eye after their glory days in the government came to an end.

NB. Safaricom's Registrar, Image Registrars, is housed in Transnational Plaza which is owned by Transnational Bank which has been linked to the said owners of Mobitelea. I'm I reading too much?

Related posts; Summary of Safaricom's IPO Prospectus and My Take On The Safaricom IPO.