Safaricom’s share price has rallied to hit Sh34, the level at which the National Treasury agreed to sell a 15 percent stake in the telco to South Africa’s Vodacom Group.
This means that it has taken just over two months for the market to close the premium that the government said it had negotiated in the deal.
The State will get Sh204.3 billion for its six billion shares and a separate Sh40.2 billion representing an upfront payment of dividends that will accrue on its residual 20 percent stake in Safaricom. This will bring its total payout to Sh244.5 billion.
The Cabinet Secretary for National Treasury and Economic Planning, John Mbadi, has said that the Sh34 per share deal was arrived at by applying a premium on Safaricom’s share price on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).
The price represented a premium of 18.4 percent to the telco’s average trading price in the 90 days to December 2, 2025, the day before Vodacom submitted its offer.
It also represented a premium of 33.9 percent to Safaricom’s average stock price in the 90 days before the offer was filed.
On December 3, 2025, when Safaricom’s board was informed of the agreement between Vodacom and Treasury, the telco’s stock closed at Sh28.2.
The share price started rising the next day to hit a high of Sh34 on Thursday, driven by the company’s strong earnings growth and declaration of a higher interim dividend.
The share price closed at an average of Sh33.85, having hit a high of Sh34 and a low of Sh33.3, according to market data.
In a market update to investors, Vodacom’s chief executive Shameel Joosub said the multinational managed to “get a good price” in the deal after trying to raise its stake earlier when Safaricom’s shares were even cheaper.
He was responding to a question on why Vodacom had not sought to buy Vodafone Group’s five percent stake in Safaricom in 2024. Vodacom is also now buying the Vodafone stake at the same price of Sh34 per share.
“And the other thing, just to, on the Vodafone, why didn’t we buy it at a lower price, because, honestly, they weren’t that stupid to sell it to us at the low, of course, we tried, but they weren’t biting,” Mr Joosub said in response to the question.
Safaricom’s share price rally has been linked to a substantial rise in earnings and dividends in a generally bullish market.
The telco raised its interim dividend payout by 54.5 percent, nearly matching its half-year profit growth.
The company announced it will pay an interim dividend of Sh0.85 per share, up from Sh0.55 per share.
The announcement follows the company booking a 52.1 percent net profit growth to Sh42.7 billion in the half year ended September 2025, buoyed by double-digit growth of the financial services platform M-Pesa.
Safaricom will pay an aggregate interim dividend of Sh34.05 billion to its shareholders, with the government taking Sh11.92 billion for its current 35 percent stake.
