Safaricom has reported a 14.4 % growth in half-year net profit to Ksh 35.65 billion. Pre-tax profit increased by 12.7% to Ksh 49.88 billion. Service revenue increased by 5.3% to Ksh124.3 billion.
The 5.3% revenue growth was attributed to the strong performance across M-pesa, fixed data and strong customer growth thus offsetting the decline in the traditional streams and weak performance on Mobile data.
Voice revenue declined by 1.4% and messaging revenue declined by 11%. This was due to competition and migration to newer technologies and also because of the effect of the corrective actions taken last year to make it easier for customers to manage their premium rate subscriptions.
Voice and messaging made up 44.6% of the service revenue.
M-pesa remained strong during the period as an 18.2% growth was reported. The growth was attributed to the 12.4% increase of one-month active M-pesa customers to 23.61 million and a 7.8% growth in monthly usage per customer to 13 chargeable transactions per month.
Mobile data had a 4% growth in revenue and accounted for 15.9% of the service revenue. Growth in mobile data is expected to increase in the second half of the year as there will be increased penetration and usage.
Fixed data registered a growth of 18.4% and contributed 3.7% of total service revenue during the period.
Safaricom is confident that they will achieve their full-year targets and strategies as well as maintain their long track record of consistently delivering and protecting shareholder wealth and putting their customers first.
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