Foreign investors purchased an additional 16.87 million KCB Group shares currently valued at Sh663.96 million in the three months ended September 2024, chipping away at the stake of locals.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed bank's latest disclosures shows that the foreign investors closed September with 365.72 million shares from 348.85 million at the end of June.
The foreigners purchased the shares from local individual and institutional shareholders even as National Treasury and National Social Security Fund (NSSF) kept their stake in KCB unchanged at 19.76 percent and 10.01 percent respectively.
Local institutional investors sold 15.41 million shares to cut their stake to 42.78 percent from 43.26 percent while local individuals sold 1.47 million share cutting their stake to 26.07 percent from 26.12 percent.
The foreigners' continued accumulation took their stake to 11.38 percent at the end of September from 10.86 percent in June and 8.91 percent at the start of the year.
The latest purchase by the foreigners adds to the 56.5 million shares they had purchased in KCB in three months ended June, 6.18 million shares purchased between January and March this year and the 7.81 million bought between September and December last year.
From holding 286.17 million shares at the start of the year, foreign investors have been in accumulation mode, adding 79.55 million shares over the past nine months. The latest purchases marked the fourth consecutive quarter of accumulating the banking stock whose share has a year-to-date return of 79.68 percent.
Going by the current share price of Sh39.35, foreigners have spent about Sh3.45 billion in new purchases this year, taking their stake in KCB to Sh15.85 billion or 11.38 percent of the issued shares.
This is their highest stake in KCB since September 2021 when it was at 11.61 percent.
This means foreigners are reversing the general trend of selling that had seen their stake in KCB fall to the low of 8.66 percent in September last year compared with highs of 29.25 percent as at the end of December 2017.
Effective May 1, Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), an international firm that provides investment data and analytics services to investors, promoted KCB Group to the MSCI frontier markets index, increasing the stock’s visibility to global investors.
KCB was promoted from the small cap index, joining the likes of Safaricom, Equity Group and East African Breweries in the constituents of frontier markets index that captures large and mid-cap stocks across 28 frontier markets.
The lender’s share is among the top gainers on the NSE since January, partly on the inclusion in the MSCI index and the improved finance performance that saw it resume dividend payment.
