The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) plans to add four new companies on the bourse in 2021, after a long period of no new listings, according to an interview with Bloomberg.
East Africa’s leading Securities exchange falls far behind major exchanges in Africa like the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Nigerian Stock Exchange, and Casablanca Stock Exchange in terms of listings. While the Nairobi Stock Exchange only has 66 listed companies, Africa’s largest Stock Exchange the Johannesburg Stock Exchange has nearly 350 listed companies and the Nigeria Stock Exchange has over 160 listed companies.
NSE Chief Executive Officer Geoffrey Odundo said that the new listings will come from the NSE Ibuka program, an incubation program designed to prepare companies to join the exchange. So far, Homeboyz Entertainment, one of the companies on Ibuka program emerged successfully from the scheme and listed on the Nairobi Exchange in December 2020.
NSE aims to increase the number of shares available for trading on the exchange by urging the government to sell some of its stake in listed state-owned companies like Safaricom, Kengen, Kenya Power, and East African Portland Cement Company to the general public. According to CEO Geoffrey Odundo, NSE looks to raise nearly KSh300 billion from the sale.
Besides the four new listings, two on NSE main investment market segment and two on the growth enterprise market segment, NSE plans to add four companies on the Unquoted Securities Platform. The Unquoted Securities platform, launched in December last year, offers unlisted companies access to long term funding through private placements.
Another major development for the NSE is Day trading which it intends to introduce in the first quarter of 2021. Day trading is a tactic used by securities traders to buy and sell a security in a day.
“We have engaged with the regulator and the Central Depository and Settlement Corporation and come up with a model that will be able to make day-trading achievable,” Geoffrey Odundo told Bloomberg.
