Companies
Kuramo takes 24pc stake in TransCentury in debt deal
Wednesday April 12 2023
Transcentury CEO, Nganga Njiinu at a past event. FILE PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NMG
Kuramo Capital has taken an extra 24 percent stake in TransCentury via conversion of part of its shareholder debt to the investment firm.
Disclosures from TransCentury’s rights issue results published last week show 272.7 million shares were taken up through the conversion to settle Kuramo’s loans amounting to Sh300 million.
The additional shares are equivalent to 24.17 percent of TransCentury’s new total number of issued shares which stands at 1.129 billion units at the close of the cash call.
Kuramo previously held a 25 percent stake in the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm.
The private equity firm’s current ownership in TransCentury is not clear since the rights issue also had a standard process through which investors injected cash to buy new shares at the offer price of Sh1.1 apiece.
TransCentury did not say whether Kuramo also participated in the cash-for-shares component of the cash call.
The rights issue was nevertheless underwhelming having posted a performance rate of 40.13 percent with shareholders leaving 1.123 billion shares on the table.
The listing and commencement of trading of fully paid new shares at the Nairobi Securities Exchange is expected on April 26.
In February, Kuramo indicated that it intended to convert part of its Sh1.9 billion shareholder loan to pay for its entitlement of shares in the rights issue in a move which forced the reopening of the rights issue after the first phase of the cash-call was widely undersubscribed.
The conversion was rubber-stamped by shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting staged on March 16.
The second phase of the rights issue ran between March 20 and March 31 after the close of the first window on February 3 with the extension indicative of a sub-par performance of the rights issue.
