Longhorn Publishers is set to list on the Alternative Market Segment (AIMS) of the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). The publisher will list 58,500,000 ordinary shares at KES 1 per share. Prior to the decision to list publicly the share were trading at KES 66 per share on the Over-the-Counter Market (OTC).

According to the Business Daily, the company will be listed by the end of June through introduction rather than the conventional Initial Public Offering (IPO).

An introduction is an application for listing of shares already in issue where no marketing arrangements are required. This is because the existing shares for which listing is sought are already of such an amount and so widely held that there would be an open market for the trading in these shares.

Comparison between IPOs and Listings by Introduction:

A listing by introduction is commonly in circumstances where:

• the shares of the company concerned have already been listed on another exchange; or
• the shares are being migrated from one exchange to another, in the case of Longhorn it is from the OTC to the AMS.

Last year the company made a profit of KES 146 million, six times higher than the profit of KES 22 million it made the year before. This year the company has actively pursued its expansion strategy, in January the company bought Dar-es-Salaam-based Delah Publishers’ for KES 12.5 million. The company’s management believes that the Tanzanian market has the potential to add over half a billion shillings to group revenues over the next eight years.

For interested investors the share may represent a stable, lengthy investment position as returns may come after a couple of years once the acquisitions in the region being to contribute to the company’s profits.