Billionaire investor Baloobhai Patel has purchased an additional 8.8 million shares of Co-operative Bank of Kenya worth Sh145.2 million, raising his stake to a new high of 1.7 percent at the end of January.
Mr Patel has been accumulating shares of the company for years, with his purchases bringing his stake closer to that of Co-op Bank chief executive Gideon Muriuki who remains the top individual investor with an ownership of two percent.
Investors have been attracted to the bank due to its incremental dividend payouts, with the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm funding its growth from retaining part of its earnings.
Co-op Bank’s latest disclosures shows that Mr Patel, who co-owns the stake with his wife Amarjeet, purchased the extra shares in a move that raised his stake from 1.55 percent last September. The additional shares are worth Sh145.2 million, going by Co-op Bank’s share price of Sh16.5 on Friday.
Mr Patel’s new purchases came even as Mr Muriuki left his stake unchanged at two percent from 2023 when he raised it from 1.75 percent.
The shareholding difference between Mr Patel and Mr Muriuki is now at 0.3 percentage points—the narrowest gaps since the lender started disclosing its ownership structure. In 2017, Mr Patel held 0.33 percent while Mr Muriuki had 1.88 percent.
Mr Patel raised his stake to 1.55 percent at the end of last September, purchased more to close December at 1.63 percent and added more shares in January to boost his stake to 1.7 percent.
The January purchases mean that he has now entered the ninth straight year of accumulating Co-op Bank shares. Mr Patel, who also has substantial interest in real estate and the hospitality sectors, is a long term investor in multiple publicly-traded firms.
He now holds 99.7 million shares of Co-op Bank, entitling him to a dividend of Sh149.6 million, based on the lender’s payout of Sh1.5 per share for the year ended December 2023.
The lender posted a 4.4 percent rise in net profit to Sh19.2 billion in the nine months ended September 2024 compared to Sh18.3 billion a year earlier.
Co-op Bank’s share price has gained about 37 percent in the past 12 months, taking its market capitalisation Sh96.7 billion to stay in the league of top five most valuable firms on the NSE. Others are Safaricom Plc, Equity Group, KCB Group and East African Breweries Plc (EABL).
Mr Patel also holds significant stakes in other NSE firms such as Absa Bank Kenya, Carbacid Investments, Sanlam Kenya and CIC Group.
He was among the investors who were recently bought out in Bamburi Cement, pocketing major capital gains and a special dividend in the process.
