Ireri on HF’s top shareholders roll after stock buy
Housing Finance CEO Frank Ireri has bought 225,000 shares. Photo/FILE
What you need to know:
The latest stock market filings for up to the month of May show Mr Ireri is now the ninth largest local individual shareholder of HF after acquiring the stake worth an estimated Sh10.5 million, going by the current market prices.
Mr Ireri said he bought the shares through HF’s employee stock option plan.
Share purchases by executives are seen as a vote of confidence in company’s future prospects.
The Housing Finance (HF) chief executive Frank Ireri has bought 225,000 shares equivalent to a 0.01 per cent stake of the company, breaking into the ranks of the mortgage provider’s top 10 individual shareholders.
The latest stock market filings for up to the month of May show Mr Ireri is now the ninth largest local individual shareholder of HF after acquiring the stake worth an estimated Sh10.5 million, going by the current market prices.
Mr Ireri said he bought the shares through HF’s employee stock option plan.
“I have been buying the shares over the years under the company’s employee share option plan (Esop),” Mr Ireri told Business Daily in a telephone interview.
Share purchases by senior executives of listed firms are ordinarily seen as a vote of confidence in the companies’ future prospects given that the high ranking staff have deep insights into the financial position of the organisations they lead.
Such purchases, when done in the open market, could also be an indication of senior executives’ belief that their stocks are under-valued.
The Housing Finance Esop plan entitled staff to buy shares at Sh10 each, an indication that those who took advantage of the offer could have gained 370 per cent as news of an impending acquisition by HF’s significant shareholder, Britam, drove the firm’s stock a new high of Sh47.
Mr Champaklal Shah is ranked as HF’s biggest individual shareholders with a 0.4 per cent stake worth Sh51 million.
Billionaire investor Paul Ndung’u, who was previously listed as the largest individual investor with a one per cent stake, was not in the shareholders’ list.
It was not immediately clear whether Mr Ndung’u —a major shareholder in Telkom Kenya’s main dealer Mobicom— sold his HF shares or transferred them to other accounts.
According to HF’s latest annual report, the company in 2010 set aside a total of 5,750,000 shares to be issued to qualifying employees at a price of Sh10 each.
HF employees last year bought a total of 470,000 shares currently worth Sh4.7 million under the stock compensation plan. About 640,000 shares under the Esop plan are still outstanding.
The firm’s stock has gained 35.7 per cent since the year started, making it one of the best performing counters at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
The share has risen 10 per cent in the past four days alone after financial services firm Britam announced last Monday that it would acquire Equity Bank’s 24.76 per cent stake in the mortgage financier.
