Investors who quaffed Kasapreko shares in its initial public offering (IPO) have been rewarded with a fizzing share price since last month’s listing on the Ghana Stock Exchange. Ghanaian beverages manufacturer Kasapreko PLC had offered 583.3 million shares at GHS 1.20 each to raise GHS 700m ($60.3m), and it received bids for nearly two and a half times that amount.
The IPO closed on 1 June, and the share offer attracted 18,781 bidders. They tendered $147.5m for 1.4 billion shares or 146% oversubscription. The company allocated 40.6% of the shares applied for to each investor and refunded the rest of their application monies. The allocation was: local institutional investors – 440.7m shares, local individuals – 76.8m, foreign institutions – 64.6m and individual foreigners – 1.3m shares.
Joint Lead Managers for the IPO were Absa Bank Ghana, Consolidated Bank Ghana and Databank Brokerage. The share offer was open from 4 May to 1 June. Here is the Kasapreko press release and the story on African Markets website.
Share price up 79%
Kasapreko listed for trading on the GSE on 15 June with ticker KASA at an initial price of GHS 1.35 and climbed as high as GHS 2.30 by 23 June. It slipped back to GHS 1.88 within a week but picked up again from 14 July and by 22 July share price closed at GHS 2.15 (share prices from MyStocks.Africa website), a gain of 79%.
Entrepreneur Kwabena Adjei founded Kasapreko in 1989 and over nearly four decades it has developed into a Ghanaian multinational beverage company manufacturing and distributing alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. The flagship product is Alomo Bitters, a herbal alcoholic drink. It also produces whiskey, gin, wine, soft drinks (such as Storm Energy Drink), and drinking water (including Awake Water).
According to the prospectus, there are 4.13bn shares after the share offer, giving a total market capitalization at the 22 July value of GHS 8.9bn ($765m)
It adds that 96% of the capital raised in the IPO (GHS 672m) is to finance a new manufacturing plant in Adeiso, in Eastern Region of Ghana, to boost production of soft drinks and bottled water to meet growing demand in domestic and export markets.
Richard Adjei, Managing Director, commented in a press release: “We have built Kasapreko into a GHC 3.5bn ($303m) revenue business over the past several years through disciplined execution, product innovation, and a relentless drive to better serve our consumers. The capital raised through this offer will accelerate our growth agenda — including expanding our production capacity and scaling our international business — enabling us to deliver sustainable, long-term value to our shareholders.”
Soaring GSE inspires local businesses and banks to come to market
The previous successful IPO (51% oversubscribed) listing of Zen Petroleum had probably inspired confidence. Here is our story on ZEN Petroleum listing and its first week of trading. ZEN’s shares were offered at GHS5.00 and closed the first day 22 April at GHS 5.05. Since then the share price has soared as high as GHS 12.61 and closed on 22 July at an impressive GHS 10.00.
It is part of a rising tide of shares on Ghana’s bourse, where the GSE Composite Index has been a global top performer for over 18 months. For the first half of 2026, the index beat all other African exchanges with a 67.9% gain measured in cedis for domestic investors and 55.3% for investors who count their gains in US dollars. This comes on top of record performance in 2025, when the GSE-CI index climbed 79.4% for local currency investors, and 154.4% for USD investors, boosted by a strong 40% recovery in the GHS:USD exchange rate.
Moses Mozart Dzawu writes for Bloomberg: “The (2026) rally has been fueled by investors shifting into equities as slowing inflation drives down borrowing costs and bond yields, boosting the appeal of stocks” In May he wrote that Ghana’s pension funds manage GHS 109bn ($9.4bn) in assets and are increasingly keen on equities.
He adds: “Inflation has eased to 3.7% from a peak of 54% in December 2022, helped by fiscal reforms implemented under a $3bn International Monetary Fund programme secured in 2023 after the nation defaulted on its debt. The cedi has stabilized and the central bank has more than halved interest rates to 14% over the period. Ghana’s benchmark 91-day treasury bill rate declined to 5% at the last auction on June 5 from 14.8% a year ago.”
African Markets website points out that the two companies have raised GHS 1.3bn in fresh capital as listings pick up momentum on the GSE. The article says: “The successive listings of ZEN Petroleum and Kasapreko suggest that local companies are once again viewing the stock market as a credible long-term source of financing. They also highlight the growing willingness of Ghanaian investors to participate in the development of national champions beyond the traditional sectors of banking, telecommunications and mining.”
In May, GSE Managing Director Abena Amoah told Bloomberg that more commercial banks are likely to list in coming months, as fruit of a GSE project encouraged by the Bank of Ghana. Currently 9 out of 23 banks are listed and more could take advantage of favourable valuations and investor enthusiasm, including from the pension funds.