Billionaire investor Baloobhai Patel raised his stake in Williamson Tea by 92,200 shares worth Sh23 million in the year to March 2024, taking the value of his holding in the company to Sh212 million.
Mr Patel’s latest share purchase in the listed tea firm means that he now holds 850,705 shares in the tea firm, equivalent to a 4.86 percent stake.
He was the only one among the company’s top 10 shareholders to raise his stake in the year to March, cementing his position as the company’s second-largest shareholder behind London-based Ngong Tea Holdings Limited, which has a controlling stake of 51.46 percent.
This was the second straight financial period during which Mr Patel bought additional Williamson Tea shares. He had acquired 257,500 shares in the company in the year to March 2023—taking his stake to 758,505 shares— which lifted him from fourth to second largest shareholder in the company.
The additional 349,700 shares he has acquired over the last two years have also raised his dividend earnings from Williamson, which in the year to March paid a total dividend of Sh25 per share.
Williamson Tea’s net profit for the period fell by 6.6 percent to Sh527 million, as higher costs ate into a 4.4 percent increase in revenue to Sh4.19 billion.
The company had paid an interim dividend of Sh10 per share in December, before declaring a final dividend of Sh15 per share which will be paid in September to shareholders on its register as of July 31, 2024.
Mr Patel is therefore in line to bank Sh12.8 million from this final dividend. It is not clear whether, at the time of the payment of the interim dividend, he had already acquired the additional 92,200 shares.
In the previous fiscal year, Williamson Tea had issued a dividend of Sh30 per share, which gave Mr Patel a payout of Sh22.8 million. He subsequently invested an equivalent amount in acquiring his additional shares in the just concluded financial year.
A long-term investor in the stock market, Mr Patel has stakes in multiple firms including Carbacid Investments, Sanlam Kenya, Co-operative Bank of Kenya, Bamburi Cement, and Absa Bank Kenya—to which he has been adding over the year.
He recently started migrating some of the stakes he holds directly to his investment vehicle Aksaya Investment Holdings Limited, a part of a succession plan that also comes with tax benefits in certain instances.
Other than Williamson Tea, the most recently disclosed addition to his shareholding was in Bamburi Cement, which is currently the subject of a takeover bid by Tanzanian conglomerate Amsons Group.
Shareholder filings disclosed by the bidder showed that as of June 30, 2024, Mr Patel’s stake in the cement firm rose to 30.52 million shares, equivalent to 8.41 percent of the company’s issued shares, from 14.96 million shares or 4.12 percent at the end of December 2023.
He owns the stake through Aksaya, making him the largest individual shareholder in Bamburi and the third largest overall behind Swiss multinational Holcim (58.3 percent) and a nominee account domiciled at Standard Chartered (15.68 percent).
→ cmwaniki@ke.nationmedia.com
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