Kenyan supermarket chain Quickmart ends founder-linked contracts ahead of $231 million IPO

Quickmart, Kenya’s second-largest supermarket chain, terminated several consultancy and management agreements with businesses tied to its founders and other insiders in July, after paying them hundreds of millions of shillings, according to disclosures published ahead of its initial public offering on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

The Kinuthia family, whose members include Zipporah, Duncan and Wambui Kinuthia, founded Quickmart in Nakuru in 2006, and Duncan Kinuthia serves as the company’s managing director. The family is among the shareholders selling stock in the offer, which opened Oct. 5 and closes Oct. 30. The IPO covers two billion existing shares priced at KSh7.50 each, half of the company’s issued share capital, and values the retailer at about KSh30 billion ($231 million). Trading is expected to begin Nov. 12.

The largest disclosed payments went to firms handling property and expansion work. Basic Land Investment Limited received KSh268.7 million in 2025 and KSh99.4 million in the first half of 2026 for property sourcing, construction oversight, lease and landlord negotiations and other commercial work. Resource Business Investments Limited was paid KSh161 million in 2025 and KSh84.9 million in the six months to June for expansion advice, supplier negotiations and site acquisition.

Quickmart also ended agreements with Acres Advisors Limited, which advised on management, staffing, retail operations and environmental and social compliance, as well as WLL Valued Added Limited, a human resources consultancy, and Mondin Consulting Limited, among others. The company’s disclosures indicate that some of the services overlapped.

Separately, the retailer paid KSh208.4 million ($1.6 million) in management fees in 2025 to its parent companies, Sokoni Retail Kenya Limited and Sokoni Holdings Limited, up about 47% from KSh141.4 million a year earlier. Private equity firm Adenia Partners and other shareholders hold their stakes in Quickmart through that structure.

The terminations do not show that any of the arrangements were improper, and Quickmart disclosed them in its information memorandum. Dealings between a company and businesses linked to its owners can still create actual or perceived conflicts of interest, which is why investors look closely at how such contracts are priced and approved.

Some of those ties remain. As of the memorandum’s date, 18 Quickmart stores were leased from related parties, including businesses controlled by Quickmart founders and directors and by a founder of Tumaini Self Service, the chain that merged with Quickmart in 2020. Quickmart said the leases were agreed on arm’s-length terms and contain no unusual provisions.

Because the IPO is an offer for sale, the company will receive none of the up to KSh15 billion it could raise. The money will go to the selling shareholders, including Adenia, the Kinuthia family, the founders of Tumaini and CEO Peter Kang’iri. The Kinuthia family stands to collect about KSh4.77 billion ($36.8 million) from the partial sale of its stake.

Quickmart reported net profit of about KSh1.5 billion in 2025, up from KSh1.1 billion a year earlier, on revenue of KSh50.4 billion, compared with KSh46.7 billion in 2024. Once the shares begin trading, investors will be able to weigh those results against the related-party leases that remain on its books.