NAIROBI – Kenyan telecoms firm Safaricom posted higher full-year group earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) on Thursday, as losses in its Ethiopia unit shrank and service revenue grew.
Safaricom said its EBIT rose 59% to 153.9 billion shillings ($1.2 billion) in its full-year to end-March.
Safaricom, partly owned by South Africa’s Vodacom and Britain’s Vodafone, launched in Ethiopia in 2022 as the government there opened the closely controlled economy to foreign competition.
It said its EBIT loss from the Ethiopian unit narrowed to 30.1 billion shillings from 61.1 billion shillings a year earlier.
Group service revenue jumped 11% to 414.1 billion shillings, while net income was up 67% to 99.7 billion shillings, Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa said at a post-earnings investor briefing. In December, Kenya’s government said it would sell a 15% stake in Safaricom to Vodacom for about $1.6 billion. The government’s Safaricom stake will be reduced to 20% from the current 35%. The sale is still awaiting the regulator’s approval and the conclusion of the case challenging the transaction.
($1 = 129.1000 Kenyan shillings) (Reporting by George Obulutsa and Vincent Mumo Nzilani; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Rashmi Aich)
Reuters
