Tea Firm Share Price Drops Drastically After Spinoff

Agricultural firm, Limuru Tea, was today the worst performer at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), with its share price declining 10% to close trading at Ksh360 from Ksh400.

In July, UK-based global firm Unilever NV announced that it was placing Limuru Tea Plc under a separate entity, a process that is set to be concluded at the end of 2021.

Limuru Tea financials show that it posted a pre-tax loss of Ksh11 million loss in the first six months of 2020, compared to a pre-tax loss of Ksh26 million in 2019.

The company states that despite depressed market prices that have continued to pose a risk to business performance, the management will continue to focus on volume growth, cost management, and other strategic initiatives to mitigate Covid-19 impact on the market.

The company also notes that the Covid-19 pandemic remains a risk to its operations.

Other laggards at the bourse included NSE, whose price dipped 5.99% to Ksh7.54, Flame Tree Group which fell 5.05% to Ksh1.33, Centum Investments which declined 3.05% to Ksh17.50, and Kenya Power which lost 2.845 to close at Ksh1.71.

The benchmark NSE All-Share Index (NASI) lost 0.18 points to close at 140.58 while the NSE 20 Share Index also shed off 7.97 points to settle at 1,755.75. The NSE 25 Share Index also fell 5.84 points to close at 3,165.51.

 A total of 4 contracts valued at Ksh129,250 were concluded at the NSE derivatives market, while bonds worth Ksh2.2 billion were transacted in 83 deals. This is compared to Ksh1.67 billion worth of bonds transacted yesterday.

The day’s top gainer was Olympia Capital Holdings whose price rose 9.745 to Ksh2.14 followed by Eveready, which appreciated by 7.07% to KSh 1.06, East African Cables which was up 6.04% to Ksh1.58, Bamburi Cement which edged 5.26% to Ksh24.00 and Stanbic Holdings, which gained 5,19% to close at Ksh81.00.

The prime mover was Safaricom with a volume of 15.70 million followed by Equity Group (2.74 million), Bamburi Cement (492,000), Centum Investments (431,800) and Bank of Kigali which moved a volume of 234,800 shares.

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