Telecommunications firm Safaricom has become the first company in East and Central Africa to clock Sh95 billion in net profit in a single year.
This is after the company made a record-breaking Sh95.6 billion net profit attributable to equity holders in the full year 2026.
This mega profit was an increase of 37 percent from the Sh69.8 billion net profit that the company had made in the previous full year 2025. This result has now positioned Safaricom as the most profitable company listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
An analysis of the results shows that M-Pesa is now accounting for 43 percent of Safaricom’s total revenue of Sh 427.5 billion.
Whereas voice has previously been the main revenue driver for the company, the growth of M-Pesa now shows how the company’s fundamentals have shifted from primarily being voice-driven to financial services.
In the full year under review, M-Pesa revenue grew 13.4 percent to Sh182.7 billion, with growth in higher customer activity, expanded merchant acceptance across Pochi la Biashara and Lipa na M-Pesa, and rising digital wealth management adoption.
At the same time, the M-Pesa platform recorded significant growth in its lending, with Fuliza disbursements rising by 49.3 percent to Sh1.47 trillion in the financial year under review.
Repayments for Fuliza funds increased byr 49.2 percent to Sh1.49 trillion, keeping the repayment-to-disbursal rate steady at 101.5 percent.
In the same vein, Fuliza revenue grew 46 percent to Sh6 billion, with distinct customers more than doubling to 17.7 million.
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Overall, Safaricom’s group service revenue crossed the Sh400 billion milestone for the first time, rising 11.5 percent to Sh414.1 billion. This was inspired by Safaricom Kenya whose service revenue recorded its highest ever absolute year over year growth by Sh36 billion to Sh400 billion.
This was a growth of 10 percen from the Sh364.3 billion service revenue that was realized in the previous year.
At the same time, the total customer base for across Safaricom now stands at 72 million.
This has been attributed to double-digit growth in Kenya and accelerated growth in Ethiopia. Safaricom Ethiopia’s service revenue for instance grew by 86.6 percent to Sh14.1 billion.
Safaricom Ethiopia contributed 12.5 percent to the overall service revenue for the year, supported by rising subscriber numbers which hit 13.6 million customers. The network coverage in Ethiopia now stands at 60 percent of the population with 3,504 active sites.
“We continue to invest in our network and IT systems to support capacity upgrades and user experience. Ethiopia’s performance shows reduced losses relative to the previous period, greatly boosting Group performance,” said Safaricom’s Group Chief Finance Officer Dilip Pal.
The growth in profitability has also come in tandem with growth in dividend yield. For the financial year under review, the company will pay out a total dividend of Sh80.13 billion, becoming the first company in the region to pay shareholders over Sh80 billion in dividend.
“We are proud to announce a record dividend of Sh2 per share for the financial year. Our dividend payout has risen above pre-COVID levels and prior to our Ethiopia investments,” Safaricom Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa said.
In the previous year, Safaricom had paid Sh48.08 billion in dividend. Since listing on the NSE on June 9, 2008, has declared a total of Sh694.29 billion in dividends. In 2008, Safaricom had paid out Sh2 billion in dividend.
Prior to the current dividend payout, the highest payout was in 2019 when the company paid out Sh74.92 billion in dividend to shareholders.
