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Safaricom profit growth hits Ksh 48.4 billion
Safaricom has this year made Ksh 213 billion from its 28 million customer base pinpointing an approximate Ksh 20 usage…
Safaricom has this year made Ksh 213 billion from its 28 million customer base pinpointing an approximate Ksh 20 usage from each.
According to the Safaricom financial results for the year ended on 31st March 2017 released on Wednesday the telco giant recorded Ksh48.4 billion in net profit, a 27.1% increase in profit from 2016 citing the profit increase to usage of non–voice services mainly M-PESA and Mobile data.
With Mobile penetration in Kenya standing at 88.2% as at 31 December 2016, Safaricom customer base grew by 11.8% to reach 28.1m as at 31 March 2017.
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According to the financial results, M-PESA revenue recorded a growth of 32.7% to Kshs 55.1bn driven by 14.6 % increase in 30 day active M-PESA customers to 19.0m and a 35.0% growth in monthly usage per customer to 10.0 transactions per month.
“Our cashless platform, Lipa na M-PESA, continues to be adopted by enterprises as a preferred payment platform. We now have over 50k merchants who are active on a 30 day basis. Mobile data revenue, accounts for 14.3% of our service revenue, grew at 38.5% to Kshs 29.3bn. This was driven by 18.1% growth in 30 day active mobile data customers to 16.6m, increased bundle users and smartphone penetration,” said CEO Safaricom Bob Collymore.
On the Fixed data revenue, Safaricom recorded an increase by 37.4% to reach Kshs 5.2bn attributed to 21.2% growth in fixed service customers. “Improving our network quality remains key and we continue with our efforts to increase network coverage, capacity and quality to ensure excellent performance and superior customer experience. In the year under review we invested Kshs 35.3bn on capital expenditure,” added Mr.Collymore.
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Mr. Collymore also said that the business had generated excellent results and continued to create value for shareholders, supported by growth in service revenue and focus on cost efficiency. This has resulted in an underlying EBIT margin of 31.5% being a 1.9ppts improvement over the last financial year.
“We have changed our guidance from EBITDA to EBIT, to better depict our operational performance. We expect our EBIT for FY18 to be in the range of Kshs 71bn to Kshs 75bn and capital expenditure, Kshs 35bn to Kshs 38bn. Strategic Priorities We will continue to create value for our stakeholders through executing our strategy by putting our customers’ first, providing relevant products and enhancing excellence in our operations,” he added.
This year will see Safaricom focus more on fibre rollout to homes as part of its convergence solutions to offer a home proposition. The company will also focus on financial inclusion through driving the uptake of cashless business payment transactions by merchants, as well as growing the number of transactions by active users to further adopt savings culture and uptake of loans through M-PESA.