Ethio Telecom shares are trading at 900 birr on Monday, up 5.63% on the day and three times the 300 birr price at which the government sold them to the public less than two years ago. For a stock that has traded on the Ethiopian Securities Exchange (ESX) for barely six weeks,
TELE has already compressed an entire market education into its price chart: an underwhelming primary sale, a long administrative wait, a euphoric debut rally, and now the first taste of volatility as early buyers test where value actually sits.
Related articles
The offer nobody fully bought
The story begins in June 2024, when Ethio Telecom, a state operator with more than 130 years of history, was converted from a public enterprise into a share company under the Commercial Code, clearing the legal path for the government to sell a stake.
In October 2024, the state put 100 million ordinary shares, a 10% stake, on offer at 300 birr per share, hoping to raise 30 billion birr. The sale was conducted entirely through the telebirr SuperApp, restricted to Ethiopian citizens, with a minimum ticket of 33 shares (9,900 birr) and a cap of 3,333 shares per buyer.
The result fell well short of ambition. By the time the offer closed, 47,377 citizens had bought 10.7 million shares, raising roughly 3.2 billion birr, barely a tenth of the target. Critics read it as a verdict on pricing and public appetite; the more charitable reading was that Ethiopia was asking first-time investors to buy an unlisted share, through a phone app, in a market with no functioning secondary exchange for the stock.
Either way, 89.3 million shares went unsold, and the buyers who did commit were locked in with no way to trade.
The long bridge to the exchange
What followed was an eleven-month grind of preparatory work that rarely makes headlines but decides whether a listing holds up: reconciling investor records, completing Know Your Customer checks, and dematerializing entitlements into electronic holdings at the National Bank of Ethiopia’s Central Securities Depository.
The Fayda national ID became the gatekeeper. By listing day, 45,366 of the 47,377 applicants, about 96%, had been verified and their 10.1 million shares digitized, with a valuation of 3.04 billion birr. Roughly 1,600 buyers were held back pending ID submission, and 248 foreign nationals were refunded outright for breaching the citizens-only terms.
The wait was not without friction. Ethio Telecom posted a record 162 billion birr in revenue for the fiscal year ending July 2025 and declared a 12 billion birr dividend, all of which went to the federal government. IPO buyers, still awaiting legal recognition as shareholders, received nothing, a decision that drew criticism from finance professionals who argued it sat uneasily with the Commercial Code’s shareholder recognition provisions. Management responded that private shareholders would enter the dividend pool from the 2025/26 fiscal year.
Listing day and the first prints
On May 26, 2026, TELE finally rang in on the ESX Main Market, becoming the exchange’s fourth listed equity, its first state-owned enterprise, its first non-financial company, and, notably, its only listing to date to have come through an actual IPO rather than an introduction.
ESX CEO Tilahun Esmael Kassahun called it a precedent for bringing state assets to market; for the exchange itself, dominated until then by Wegagen, Gadaa, and Awash banks, it was the arrival of the most recognizable brand in the country.
The market wasted no time repricing the stock. Within the first days of trading, TELE changed hands around 345 birr, already 15% above the offer price. What followed through June was a steady, at times aggressive, climb as a large pool of verified shareholders met a very small pool of willing sellers. The float is tiny relative to the company: 10.7 million shares against a business that generated 85 billion birr in revenue in the first half of FY2025/26 alone.
Where TELE stands today
Monday’s session captured both the promise and the growing pains. The stock closed at 900 birr, up 48 birr on the day, but the tape underneath was thin: 1,150 shares traded across 36 trades, with bids at 900 and offers stretching to 1,000, a spread of more than 11%.
The intraday chart tells its own story, with the share touching highs above 1,020 birr in recent sessions before easing back toward 900. Momentum indicators have cooled from June’s peaks, suggesting the first leg of the post-listing rally is consolidating.
None of this is unusual for a newly listed stock in a young market. Price discovery with a small float, no market makers, and a shareholder base of first-time retail investors was always going to be jagged. What matters is that the fundamentals beneath the price remain formidable.
Half-year results to December 2025 showed revenue up 37% to 85 billion birr, net profit of 42.4 billion birr, 87.1 million subscribers, and a telebirr ecosystem processing 1.9 trillion birr in transfers in six months. Even after tripling, the market is pricing roughly 10.7 million shares of a business whose remaining 90%, plus the unsold IPO tranche, sits with the state.
For the 45,000-plus Ethiopians who bought at 300 birr and held through eighteen months of paperwork, the journey so far has been vindication. For the market, TELE is the stress test it needed: proof that a state enterprise can be sold, verified, listed, and traded, and a live demonstration that prices, once discovered, do not move in one direction. Six weeks in, Ethiopia’s flagship stock is doing exactly what a flagship should: teaching the market how to be a market.
