Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited (BTCL) shares surged 30 percent to P1.30 on its first day of trading on the Botswana Stock Exchange on Friday.
The company listed 1.05 billion shares on the bourse marking the completion of the country’s first privatisation of a state-owned enterprise.
The shares listed at one pula per share but moved up to P1.30 on its debut after 31,000 shares changed hands in two transactions resulting in a turnover of P40,300.
Yesterday, the counter traded the same volumes as Friday but the share price did not move with buyers offering to pay P1.30 per share while sellers asked for P1.35 per share.
The listing followed an Initial Public Offer (IPO) in which 462 million shares were sold to the public slashing government shareholding from 100 percent to 51 percent. Speaking at the listing, BTCL CEO, Paul Taylor said there was overwhelming response to the IPO with 776 million applications received for the 462 million shares on offer.
”From now, we must raise our game and meet the new challenges head on as thousands of Batswana now own shares, many of them for the very first time,” he said.
Following the listing BTCL shares are only available for trading to Batswana and citizen owned companies.
The coming on board of BTCL increased the domestic market cap to levels of P49.6 billion exceeding the “pre ABCH+FSG” delisting levels of around P46 billion.
In the week, total volumes traded on the bourse were thin at about 5.8 million with Choppies and Letshego trading about 76 percent of those trades.
On the domestic front, Cresta had a two-week rallying streak as it reached a new 12-month high of 114 thebe, following its year-end results. The hotel operator registered an 11 percent growth in PAT, increasing its profit margin to about 8.3 percent from 7.9 percent during the prior financial year. Engen also closed in the black as investors respond to their recent special dividend (which buoyed its yield to over seven percent) and full year results where the petroleum giant achieved a 68 percent surge in profit after tax despite a 14 percent decline on the top-line. On the financial sector, Letshego notched up by 0.4 percent to trade at 251 thebe.
