The Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) has built up 10 percent stakes in Tokyo Cement Company (Lanka) PLC (TKYO) and ACL Cables PLC through a series of transactions, crossing the thresholds between February and July this year, though the milestones were made public only this week through filings with the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE).
In its letter to the CSE, the EPF stated that it holds 29,403,000 voting shares and 14,701,500 non-voting shares in TKYO, representing 10 percent of each class, having reached the non-voting threshold on February 17 and the voting threshold on April 8.
A separate filing disclosed that the EPF’s holding in ACL Cables reached 71,872,416 shares or 10 percent of the company’s issued shares, on July 22.
Both letters are dated November 5, which means the announcements trailed the threshold dates by nearly nine months for TKYO’s non-voting shares, almost seven months for its voting shares and about three and a half months for ACL Cables.
The EPF’s voting stake in TKYO now matches the 29,403,000 shares held by Ube Singapore Holdings, which has a nominee director on the cement maker’s board, as per TKYO’s interim accounts for the September quarter. The EPF did not feature among the company’s 20 largest voting shareholders a year earlier.
It has also emerged as the largest holder of TKYO’s non-voting shares, more than doubling its stake from 6.21 million shares or 4.22 percent, as at September 30, 2025.
The EPF’s quarterly portfolio data show that the fund held 22.88 million TKYO voting shares at end-March or 7.8 percent of the class. This implies that it acquired 6.52 million voting shares in the first eight days of April alone, at a cost of Rs.584 million or an implied average of Rs.89.57 a share. The holding has since remained unchanged at exactly 29,403,000 shares through end-September. However, the TKYO position closed the June quarter below cost, with the combined market value of the two share classes at Rs.3.62 billion, against a purchase cost of Rs.3.85 billion. That gap has widened since, as the voting shares last traded at Rs.82.30 and the non-voting shares at Rs.60.00 at end-September, valuing the stake at roughly Rs.3.30 billion.
The ACL Cables stake, in contrast, has proved far more profitable on paper. ACL’s interim accounts placed the EPF as the company’s third largest shareholder at end-June, with 68.86 million shares or 9.58 percent, behind Chairman U.G. Madanayake and Managing Director Suren Madanayake.
The holding had risen from 61.90 million shares or 8.6 percent, at end-March, on an outlay of Rs.652 million. A further 3.01 million shares acquired in July then took it to the 10 percent mark, which leaves the fund alone holding more than a quarter of the 272.54 million shares in public hands at end-June.
A 17.6 percent rise in ACL’s share price to Rs.100 during the June quarter pushed the market value of the holding to Rs.6.89 billion, more than twice its Rs.3.32 billion cost.
Meanwhile, the two disclosures form part of a wider equity buying push by the country’s largest superannuation fund. The purchase cost of its listed equity portfolio rose 14.7 percent to Rs.100.15 billion in the June quarter, from Rs.87.33 billion at end-March, while its market value climbed 11.95 percent to Rs.204.94 billion, from Rs.183.07 billion.
John Keells Holdings (JKH) and Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) absorbed more than half of the roughly Rs.12.8 billion added. The EPF deployed Rs.3.43 billion to lift its JKH holding 2.5 times to 280.79 million shares and Rs.3.35 billion to more than triple its CTC holding to 2.68 million shares.
Other sizeable additions during the quarter included Rs.981 million in Hemas Holdings, Rs.886 million in Chevron Lubricants Lanka, Rs.848 million in Access Engineering and Rs.781 million in Melstacorp. LOLC Holdings was the only counter in which the fund trimmed its position. The six banks in its portfolio received only marginal additions, so the sector’s share of the portfolio’s market value fell to 32.9 percent, from 37.1 percent at end-March. The EPF notes that its portfolio figures are unaudited and provisional and that the changes in the holdings reflect purchases, sales, scrip dividends and corporate actions.
