Quickmart IPO opens at KES 7.50 a share, valuing the supermarket chain at KES 30 billion

Quickmart’s share sale opened on Monday 5th October 2026. Each share costs KES 7.50. The seller, Sokoni Retail Kenya, is offering 2 billion of Quickmart’s 4 billion shares, so half the company is up for sale. If every share sells, that’s KES 15 billion, and it values the whole supermarket chain at KES 30 billion.

This is an initial public offering (IPO), the first time a company sells its shares to the public. Once it closes, the shares will trade on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). When we covered the plan to list late last month, there was no price yet. Now there’s a price, a closing date and rules for who gets how many shares.

How KES 7.50 compares with profit

A share price on its own doesn’t tell you much, so compare it with profit. Quickmart’s information memorandum, the offer document, forecasts a profit of KES 2.1 billion for 2026. Divide the KES 30 billion price tag by that and you get about 14. That’s the price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E. You’re paying for about 14 years of this year’s forecast profit upfront, so the lower the number, the cheaper the share.

The memorandum puts it at 12.9, because it uses an adjusted profit of KES 2.32 billion that leaves out management fees and other costs Quickmart treats as one-offs. On the KES 1.51 billion Quickmart made in 2025, it’s 19.9.

Stanbic Bank, which leads the sale, compares Quickmart’s price with 11 listed grocery chains from South Africa to Saudi Arabia. Their median P/E for 2026 is 17.7. For NSE companies other than banks and insurers, it’s 12.7. So at KES 7.50 you pay less for each shilling of profit than you would for those foreign grocers, and a little more than for a typical Kenyan listed company, as long as Quickmart hits its forecast.

Stanbic’s note says it isn’t an independent valuation and rests on management’s projections, which Stanbic didn’t check. The price came from the seller, at what Stanbic calls a discount to Sokoni’s own assessment of Quickmart’s worth.

The dividend buyers will get

The other reason to buy is the dividend. A dividend yield is the year’s dividend as a share of what you paid. Quickmart expects to pay KES 2 billion for 2026, which is KES 0.50 a share, or 6.7% at KES 7.50. That’s the yield the memorandum quotes.

New shareholders won’t get all of it. Quickmart has already paid Sokoni KES 1.1 billion for the first half of 2026, which the memorandum calls a shareholder’s advance and ties to interim dividends. That’s 126% of the KES 872.8 million it made in those six months. The float notice says the first dividend after listing covers the second half of 2026 and is paid in the first half of 2027. The memorandum doesn’t split the KES 2 billion between the halves. If the KES 1.1 billion counts towards it, about KES 900 million is left for the second half, roughly KES 0.23 a share or 3% on KES 7.50.

The first full year you’d be paid for is 2027. Quickmart expects to pay KES 2.5 billion that year, about KES 0.63 a share, which is an 8.3% yield at KES 7.50. Both years’ forecasts pay out at least 90% of forecast profit, so there’s little cushion if profit falls short.

Who gets the money

Quickmart gets none of the KES 15 billion. It all goes to Sokoni, which pays the KES 575.6 million cost of the offer, about KES 0.29 a share, and keeps the remaining KES 14.4 billion.

Sokoni’s largest owner is a holding company controlled by funds that Adenia Partners, a private equity firm, manages. The rest belongs to Quickmart’s founders, the founders of Tumaini, the chain Quickmart merged with in 2020, and chief executive Peter Kang’iri. After the sale, Sokoni still owns half of Quickmart. It has agreed not to sell 60% of that stake for two years after listing, with some exceptions.

Before you apply

The price is fixed, so there’s no bidding. The float notice said Sokoni could sell up to 15% more shares if demand was strong. The final offer drops that option, so the sale stays at KES 15 billion.

The offer isn’t underwritten either, meaning no bank has promised to buy the shares the public doesn’t take. So it only goes ahead if applications cover 75% of the shares, which is 1.5 billion shares or KES 11.25 billion. If they don’t, everyone gets their money back, without interest.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private-sector arm, has conditionally committed up to USD 15 million, or about KES 1.94 billion. That’s roughly 13% of the offer and 6.5% of Quickmart. IFC’s board still has to approve it, and the memorandum notes IFC can sell at any time.

Kenyan retail investors have 400 million shares set aside, 20% of the offer or KES 3 billion. If people ask for more than that, every order is cut back in proportion, so you may get fewer shares than you applied for. If another investor group falls short, its leftover shares go to the groups that asked for more, retail first.

The minimum is 500 shares, which is KES 3,750, and after that you add shares in hundreds. There’s no maximum. You’ll need a CDS account, where the central depository records the shares you own. A central depository agent, such as a stockbroker, opens one for you. Then apply on the application portal, by dialling *483*803# for orders up to KES 250,000, or with a paper form handed to the placing agents.

Quickmart’s offer website also lists Ziidi Trader, in Safaricom’s M-PESA app, as a way to apply. Once you’ve applied you can’t withdraw, and retail investors have to pay by 5:00pm on 30th October.

Quickmart says these dates can change.

On Quickmart’s own numbers, KES 7.50 is a fair price for a chain that nearly doubled its sales between 2021 and 2025. Those numbers are the company’s own forecasts, though. The 6.7% yield in the memorandum covers all of 2026, and buyers are only in for the second half, so the 8.3% forecast for 2027 is the better guide to what you’d earn. If you apply, the next date is 6th November, when you’ll find out how many shares you got.