Mobile telco, and East Africa’s most profitable company, Safaricom, has once again posted increased revenue and profit.
For the full year 2018, Safaricom posted a profit of Sh63.4 billion up from Sh55.4 billion reported in 2017. That’s a 13.9% growth.
What’s more impressive than the profit is the revenue, which grew to Ksh 240.3 billion, up from Ksh224 billion the previous year. That translates to daily revenue of over Ksh650 million, showing just how strong Safaricom’s hold on the Kenyan economy is.
Voice is still the biggest revenue generator, accounting for 36.6%. However Mpesa continues to close that gap and last year accounted for 31.2% of the service revenue. This is a 19.2 growth, which accounted for 75% of the total company revenue growth.
Mobile data was the third biggest revenue source for Safaricom standing at 16.1%, with messaging coming forth at 7.3%. However, while mobile data revenue increased by 6.4 per cent to Sh38.69 billion, messaging revenue decreased by 1.3 per cent to Sh17.50 billion.
Fixed data was one of the biggest winners, seeing a 22.7% increase to Sh8.19 billion. This is as a result of Safaricom rolling out their Fibre to the Home service to more estates and houses.
“We are pleased with the strong results we have delivered for the year, building on our long track record of delivering relevant products and putting the customer first. We foresee continued growth in the future,” CEO Bob Collymore said.
One of the biggest surprises however came in the form of Fuliza. The company has revealed that in just 3 months, customers have borrowed Sh45 billion. 8.8 customers have opted into Fuliza, half of them having opted in the first month and borrowing Sh6.2 billion in that first month.
There was also an increase on the number of customers using the PayPal – Mpesa service, with 11,000 transacting monthly.
On the subscriber numbers, Collymore revealed that Safaricom now has 31.8 million subscribers, out of the 49 million subscribers in Kenya.
The firm has proposed to spend Sh50.08 billion on dividends, amounting to Sh1.25 per share.
Safaricom will continue with its expansion, proposing to spend over Sh36 billion to double its 4G network coverage to 5000 base stations by March 2020. That, according to Collymore will cover 80% of the Kenyan population.
There was however no talk of 5G.
