(Edit: The Kenya Airways Rights Issue press announcement has been postponed from today 30th May 2012 to 6th June. The notice, put up in major dailies this morning, has forwarded the press announcement by a week. The rest of the items remaining in the rights program- the last date of payment of Irrevocable Bank Guarantee (IBG) and Letters of Undertaking, Electronic Crediting of CDS accounts with new shares and listing date- have all been moved forward by a week to 4th June 2012, 7th June 2012 and 12th June 2012)
Kenya Airways has successfully completed its rights issue.
The cash-call is the biggest ever in the history of the Nairobi Securities Exchange (and in the Nairobi Stock Exchange before the renaming). The company sought to raise KES 20.68 billion through the sale of nearly 1.5 billion shares at a price of KES 14 for each new ordinary share.
Analysts believe that, while the rights will be taken up in full and possibly oversubscribed (read a related story on that here) , once the shares commence trading on the NSE, the share price will fall. They say that the additional shares, 16 for every 5 currently held, will lead to a price drop because of the increased supply of the shares. The rights issue essentially quadruples the number of shares by adding 3.2 shares to every 1 share held. With this in mind, it is logical to say that the share price can even drop to four times the current value once the new shares begin trading on the NSE.
The shares commence trading on the NSE on Tuesday 12 June 2012, in about 2 weeks.