Telecommunications firm Safaricom has released its full year results for the financial year ended March 2023.

In the results, Safaricom has recirded a 22.2 per cent profit drop. This drop has seen Safaricom’s annual net profit fall from Sh. 67.49 billion to Sh. 52.48 billion. This is the third time that Safaricom’s net profit is falling.

The huge drop in earnings has been attributed to the heavy capital investments Safaricom has made in Ethiopia.

Coincidentally, these results have come out hot on the heels of the licensing of Safaricom’s money transfer service M-Pesa in Ethiopia.

The new M-Pesa licence is estimated to have cost Safaricom $150 million (Sh. 20.5 billion at the current exchange rates).

James Sang: I moved to US on visit visa, refused to return to Kenya, got green card

Safaricom rolled out operations in Ethiopia about seven months ago.  Safaricom Ethiopia however posted a net loss of Sh. 21.7 billion while the Kenyan unit posted Sh. 74.5 billion profit. The profit from the Kenyan unit was the result of strong growth in mobile data and mobile money.

According to Safaricom chief executive officer Peter Ndegwa, Safaricom Kenya recorded Sh. 116.3 billion in Earnings Before Interest and Taxes against a guidance range of Sh. 112 to Sh. 115 billion, and thereby outperforming by over Sh. 1 billion.

During the year under review, revenue from M-Pesa grew by 8.8 per cent to Sh. 117.2 billion. At the same time, income from mobile data grew by 10.7 percent to Sh. 53.6 billion.

This marked the first time that revenue from mobile data has crossed the Sh. 50 billion.

“Mobile data grew double digit by 10.6 per cent driven by increased usage evidenced by a 53.8 per cent growth in the average Gigabytes per user to 3.5GB. Fixed Enterprise and Fibre To The Home (FTTH) revenues grew 21.4 per cent and 17.9 per cent year on year respectively driven by growth in customers,” said Safaricom’s Dilip Pal.