Quickmart is going public. On 23 September 2026, Kenya’s second-largest supermarket chain published its intention to float on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). An intention to float is the notice a company gives a few weeks before its initial public offering (IPO), the first sale of its shares to the public. Quickmart’s only shareholder, Sokoni Retail Kenya, plans to sell 2 billion existing shares, half the company, in an offer expected to open on or around 30 September.
If demand is strong, Sokoni can sell up to 300 million more shares. That’s an over-allotment option, and it’s capped at 15% of the offer. Using all of it would leave Sokoni with 42.5% of Quickmart. The Capital Markets Authority (CMA) and the NSE still have to approve the offer, and neither had posted anything on Quickmart by 24 September.
Who gets the money
No new shares are being issued, so Quickmart doesn’t raise a shilling. The money goes to Sokoni, the holding company through which funds run by Adenia Partners, a Mauritius-based private equity firm, hold Quickmart alongside the families that founded Quickmart and Tumaini supermarkets and group CEO Peter Kang’iri. Each sells part of its stake in proportion. Kang’iri says the business doesn’t need new money to grow.
There’s no price yet. Quickmart has filed a draft information memorandum with the CMA and the NSE. That’s the offer document, and it’ll carry the price, the timetable and the risks. Quickmart has 4 billion shares in total, so every KES 1 of share price values the company at KES 4 billion and the offer at KES 2 billion.
Who Quickmart is
The late John Kinuthia and his son Duncan opened the first Quickmart in Nakuru in 2006. Tumaini started the same year in Nairobi’s Eastlands. Adenia bought into Tumaini in 2018 and Quickmart in 2019, and the two chains merged on 1 January 2020 under the Quickmart name.
Quickmart now has 72 stores in 16 counties, up from 61 when Safaricom started selling its 5G routers there in May 2025. Thirty-five of them run 24 hours, and Kang’iri says night sales bring in 8% to 10% of revenue. Every store is leased. Q-Points, the loyalty programme, has 2.5 million members, and they account for 74% of sales.
What the numbers show
Revenue nearly doubled in four years, from KES 25.7 billion in 2021 to KES 50.4 billion in 2025. For scale, Naivas, the largest chain, sold KES 113.5 billion in the year to June 2025. Quickmart’s growth has slowed every year since 2022, though, and was 8% in 2025. It forecasts KES 58.2 billion for 2026, up 15%.
Grocery margins are thin. Quickmart made KES 1.51 billion after tax in 2025, about KES 3 on every KES 100 of sales. The KES 1.7 billion in the press release is an adjusted figure. It leaves out costs Quickmart treats as one-offs, including management fees, merger costs and losses from political protests. The forecast is KES 2.1 billion for 2026 and KES 2.85 billion for 2027.
Kang’iri calls the business debt-free, and bank debt is close to zero: KES 6.8 million in borrowings against KES 700 million in cash on 30 June. Rent is the catch. Accounting rules treat store leases like loans, and Quickmart’s net finance charges came to KES 1.28 billion in 2025, more than a third of its operating profit. Suppliers carry the rest. Quickmart sells stock before it pays for it, which left it with negative working capital of KES 4 billion in June.
The dividend pitch
Quickmart pays out nearly everything it earns. Dividends for 2025 were KES 1.65 billion, more than that year’s reported profit. It has paid KES 3.7 billion since 2022, and that’s a big part of why its net assets are only KES 1.9 billion.
After listing, the board plans to pay out at least 80% of profit, twice a year. It expects about KES 2 billion for 2026, or about KES 0.50 a share. So if you buy in the offer, your first dividend is for the second half of 2026, and it’s paid in the first half of 2027.
Who can buy
The offer is open to Kenyan retail and institutional investors, investors elsewhere in the East African Community and eligible foreign investors. Stanbic’s SBG Securities leads the sale, and you apply through a stockbroker. Once the shares trade, Ziidi Trader in the M-PESA app can buy them.
Kenya Pipeline Company ended an IPO drought of more than a decade when the government sold 65% of it at KES 9 a share in an offer that closed in February. On 23 September, those shares closed at KES 9.00, right back at the offer price. Quickmart would be the NSE’s second listed supermarket. The first, Uchumi, still trades while it works through a court-approved deal with its creditors, and it’s worth about KES 490 million.
Kang’iri and Adenia partner Martha Osier are aiming for 144 stores in 35 counties within five years, the top end of the 10 to 15 new stores a year in the float notice. The price comes with the information memorandum, expected around 30 September. Once it’s out, divide the KES 0.50 a share Quickmart expects to pay for 2026 by that price, and you have the dividend yield on offer.
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