Express Kenya has recorded a loss for the 12th year running, with the full-year deficit widening to KSh 125.02 Mn in the year ended 31 December 2025.
- •Ongoing construction of a strip mall and filling station on its Industrial Area land has curtailed the rental income that now constitutes the company's only meaningful revenue stream.
- •Revenue fell 19% to KSh 21.27 Mn, the third lowest in the company's recorded history and a figure that represents a 99% collapse from the KSh 3.98 Bn the group generated at its operational peak in the early 2000s.
- •The termination of a major distribution contract with East African Breweries Limited was the trigger that unraveled a business once generating nearly KSh 1 Bn in annual revenue.
Direct costs of KSh 100.18 Mn outpaced income by nearly five to one, producing a gross loss of KSh 78.91 Mn.
Finance costs surged 27.1% to KSh 51.57 Mn, more than double total revenue, driving the pre-tax loss to KSh 155.68 Mn before a tax credit of KSh 30.66 Mn reduced the net loss to KSh 125.02 Mn. Basic and diluted loss per share widened to KSh 2.62 from KSh 2.26. No dividend was declared.
The most consequential development of 2025 will not appear in the year's accounts. On 4 June 2025, Express Kenya signed an agreement to sell three acres of its land for KSh 300 Mn. Administrative delays in processing new title deeds after subdivision pushed the closing past year-end, and the transaction completed in the first quarter of 2026. It will be recognized in the financial statements for the year ending 31 December 2026.
The proceeds represent more than 14 times the company's entire 2025 revenue. If applied to debt reduction, they could materially alter a balance sheet carrying KSh 429.32 Mn in non-current borrowings and total non-current liabilities of KSh 905.76 Mn. Shareholders' funds rose 15.2% to KSh 472.18 Mn on the back of a KSh 267.54 Mn property revaluation surplus, but accumulated losses deepened to KSh 666.06 Mn.
Why Express Kenya is in the Red
Express Kenya has not reported a full-year profit since 2013, when it scraped a marginal KSh 0.23 Mn surplus, the only interruption in a loss-making run that stretches from 2011 through to the present day with just that single exception. The trajectory since is unambiguous: losses of KSh 77.35 Mn in 2014, KSh 60.09 Mn in 2015, deepening through the KSh 100 Mn threshold in 2023 and now KSh 125.02 Mn in 2025.
The Capital Markets Authority suspended trading in XPRS shares in 2017 as shareholder value collapsed, and by 2020 the company was openly contemplating both delisting and the discontinuation of its core logistics operations. It has since shed its transport fleet, cleared its freight forwarding divisions, and retreated entirely into warehousing and land.
Management's answer is a strip mall and filling station under construction on the company's Industrial Area property, the first phase of a broader redevelopment plan. Total non-current assets rose to KSh 1.39 Bn in 2025, up from KSh 1.19 Bn in 2024, driven by the revaluation and the appearance for the first time of an investment property line at KSh 37.08 Mn, reflecting the development in progress.
The board says the principal shareholder will continue to provide financial support as required, a commitment that has sustained the company through years of negative cash generation. Net cash used in operations was KSh 6.10 Mn in 2025, and the company ended the year with KSh 1.32 Mn in cash.
The AGM scheduled for June 2026 will be the first opportunity for shareholders to receive a formal update on construction progress. The KSh 300 Mn land sale, once booked, and the eventual rental income from a completed development, represent the only credible path out of a structural impasse that twelve years of losses have been unable to resolve.
