Giant Telecommunication Company in East Africa Safaricom has announced Sh34.2 billion in net profit for the half-year period ending September 30, 2023.
The Kenyan business hit double-digit growth in Net income of Sh41.6 billion to close at 10.9 percent for the period ending September 30, 2023.
The strong performance comes on the backdrop of a price reduction in Kenya business allowing customers to do more for less.
Since 2020, Safaricom has progressively reduced up to 65% in data prices, 44% in outgoing calls per minute, and up to 61% reduction in M-PESA tariff.
The growth has also been supported by a purposeful execution of the business strategy that included the launch of the youth-specific product, Safaricom Hook, and accelerated 5G rollout.
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“We have delivered a great set of results largely by supporting our customers with enhanced value and reduced prices on our products and services. We appreciate that everyone is going through a hard time and are committed as a business to supporting our customers ’ coping. The reduced prices have seen our customers use more of our services hence the double-digit growth in profitability and revenue,” Peter Ndegwa, Safaricom CEO said.
Safaricom CEO Ndegwa announced the results at the Michael Joseph Centre on Thursday, November 9, 2023.
In March, Safaricom PLC reported a 10.6 percent decline in profit after tax for the year ended March 2023.
This was attributed to inflation pressures on customers' spending and high investment costs in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia operations hit all major milestones, boosted by an accelerated commercial momentum including the M-PESA roll which has seen the company register over 1.2million customers on the platform in less than two months.
“This confirms what we have been saying about Ethiopia in terms of how it will significantly support our growth into the future. We are looking to maintain this momentum in the second half of the year,” he said.
With only 35% of Ethiopians being financially included, Safaricom’s strategic vision is to deepen financial inclusion and promote a cash-lite economy in Ethiopia.
“We see more opportunities with M-PESA and mobile data, though coming off a small base. We are particularly impressed with the usage levels in mobile data. Such levels were only realized in Kenya after close to 10 years of operations,” Mr Ndegwa said.
In the month of September, Ethiopia's data usage was higher than Kenya's, having closed at 4.3 gigabytes per customer compared to 3.7 for Kenya.
