KCB Group now corrects NSSF shareholding

KCB corrected its shareholding structure and canceled previous filings that showed the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) sold NIS 837.2 million worth of shares in the three months to December.

The lender made corrections to its December regulatory filings to show that NSSF purchased an additional 21.36 million shares in the three months through December to bring its stake to 9.73 percent.

This remained unchanged until the end of March.

The latest disclosure is a correction from a previous filing made available in February showing that NSFF had disposed of 21.63 million shares in the three-month period and reduced its stake in the lender to 8.39 percent.

The revision means that the National Social Security Fund, between October and December last year, spent about Kshs 809.6 million in accumulated stocks in the period when the average bank share price was NIS 37.90.

The National Social Security Fund has been steadily increasing its stake in the lender and other large caps on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE), with an emphasis on its stable fundamentals and regular dividend payments that complement investment income from government securities.

The Pension Fund is the largest domestic institutional investor in the stock market, owning large stakes in many companies directly and through appointed fund managers.

Its latest share amounts to KCB Sh312.7m as final dividend, which is added to around Sh269.9m in January as interim dividend.

KCB in mid-January paid Sh1 as an interim dividend and proposed a similar amount as a final dividend to shareholders who were on its register when the business closed on April 6.

The lender, along with Safaricom, provides the pension fund the largest source of dividend income, due to the large amount of shares held in the two companies.

The fund’s latest audited financial statements covering the year ending June 2021 show that KCB and Safaricom made profits of Sh265.7m and Sh337.7m in the period respectively.

The National Social Security Fund acquired 6.12 percent of the ownership of the Central Bank of Kuwait in March 2019 and raised it from purchasing more shares.

Besides converting its previous stake in the National Bank of Kenya (NBK) into shares of the country’s second largest bank.

The increase in the share of the National Social Security Fund came in the period when foreign investors sold 9.03 million shares between October 2022 and March, reducing their stakes to 8.9 percent.

The share of local institutional investors reached 45.04 percent, while the share of local individuals closed in March at 26.3 percent. Treasury’s share remained unchanged at 19.76 percent.

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