Safaricom share price drops after Raila attack

The Safaricom share price marginally dropped by 0.96% to trade at Ksh25.75 down from Tuesday’s price of Ksh26 a day after Nasa leader Raila Odinga sensationally accused the giant telco of facilitating the rigging of the August 8 presidential election.

Safaricom’s share price has been on an upward trajectory after shaking off election jitters and uncertainty caused by the Supreme Court’s decision to void President Uhuru Kenyatta’s win. On Monday, it was trading at Ksh 25.75.

A total of 6.92 million shares were moved during Wednesday’s trading.

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On September 1, the day majority of the Supreme Court judges delivered a ruling in favour of Raila, there was a surge in trading in Safaricom, Equity and East Africa Breweries Limited causing a dip in share prices across several counters.

The Nairobi Securities Exchange was forced to shut down for 30 minutes as foreign investors pushed block sales that triggered a circuit breaker at the bourse. A total of 44.75 million shares were disposed off at Ksh24.25 on that day. A further 55.94 million shares were sold on September 4 at Ksh24 per share.

The share price had hit a 52-week high of Ksh 27.25, set on August 29.

On Tuesday, Raila claimed Safaricom routed results from polling stations to a server in France rather than the IEBC local servers and public portal in connivance with French firm, OT-Morpho Safran, which had been contracted to operate the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (Kiems). Some Nasa supporters started agitating for a boycott of its services.

In a swift rejoinder, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore refuted the claims, saying, on the contrary, results from KIEMs kits from Safaricom zones, were transmitted and are on the IEBC web portal. The IEBC had divided the country into zones with Airtel and Telkom Kenya being the other Virtual Mobile Network providers assigned by the Commission to transmit results.

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The Communication Authority of Kenya Director General Francis Wangusi has also come to the defense of Safaricom, saying no transmission failure report was submitted to them.

He asked Nasa to stop “public lynching” of Safaricom and instead file any grievances with relevant authorities.

Collymore says Safaricom is ready to be subjected to investigations and/or private prosecutions on the matter.

The IEBC has, meanwhile, said Safaricom will be the only firm that would transmit results of the repeat presidential election knocking off Telkom Kenya and Airtel.