An arm of the UK government is buying a 6.5 percent stake in Quickmart through the retailer’s initial public offering (IPO) for Sh1.94 billion ($15 million), marking another bid by foreign anchor investment.
The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) announced it will buy 260 million of the two billion shares on offer.
It will buy the shares through MOBILIST, a UK government programme that uses taxpayers’ cash to buy stakes in private companies, which is seen as a shift from handing out foreign aid.
The FCDO will join the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—the World Bank’s private investment arm— as a cornerstone investor in the Sh15 billion IPO, which has valued Quickmart at Sh30 billion.
The IFC has also committed to buying a similar stake of 6.5 percent for Sh1.94 billion, providing a boost in confidence to an IPO, whose offer will close on October 30.
For the IFC, this is not the first equity investment in a Kenyan retailer, having participated in a consortium that bought and sold a 31.5 percent stake in Naivas between 2020 and 2022 for a tidy profit.
IFC and MOBILIST are hoping for a similar outsized return from Quickmart upon its exit, on the back of the retailer’s expansion plans and steady dividend payouts.
“We welcome MOBILIST as an investment partner as we broaden Quickmart’s ownership. With MOBILIST’s support, our proposed listing will help realise Quickmart’s ambition to create long-term shareholder value”, Quickmart Plc CEO, Peter Kang’iri, says.
The Quickmart deal marks MOBILIST’s latest investment via the Kenyan public markets following its role as the cornerstone investor in the March 2026 listing of Kenya’s debut US dollar-denominated industrial Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) floated by Africa Logistics Properties.
MOBILIST invested $9 million (Sh1.2 billion) in the Africa Logistics Properties industrial REIT, which raised Sh3.82 billion from investors.
Cornerstone investors are institutional or high net worth investors who agree in advance to buy a specific stake in an IPO, signaling confidence in an offer to other buyers.
The IFC, however, said its participation in the sale is not an endorsement or recommendation to other investors to participate in the IPO.
In Quickmart’s IPO, current owners who include Mauritius-registered private equity fund Adenia Partners, the founders of Quickmart and Tumaini supermarkets and the retailer’s chief executive officer Peter Kang’iri are offloading two billion shares, equivalent to a 50 percent stake.
The IPO could, however, usher in other large investors into the business, given the allocation criteria that sets aside 35 percent of the offer shares for Kenyan institutional investors, equivalent to an ultimate holding of 17.5 percent of the company’s issued shares.
Local retail and foreign investors have been allocated 20 percent each, East African Community investors 12 percent, and the IFC 13 percent. These limits can be adjusted depending on subscription levels per investor category.
Quickmart is now the second largest retail chain in Kenya behind Naivas by store count and turnover, with an estimated 15 percent share of the market. The company has a current store count of 72, in 16 counties.
In the year ended December 2025, Quickmart reported a 33 percent growth in net profit to Sh1.51 billion. Sales rose by 9.3 percent to Sh50.43 billion in the year.
The retailer paid its shareholders a dividend of Sh1.65 billion, representing a payout ratio of 109 percent and is aiming to distribute at least 80 percent of its earnings to shareholders in the coming years.
