Safaricom Ltd has announced that growth in data has compensated for a decline in voice revenues and this has helped it to counter on increased competition from alternative services such as WhatsApp.
The company on Wednesday announced that its profit after tax rose 19 per cent to Ksh38.1bn in the year to March on the back of strong revenue growth in its Mpesa mobile money platform and mobile data.
However, the company’s revenue from voice and sms services were low each representing 3.9 per cent and 10.6 per cent respectively. Voice, at Ksh90.8bn, remained the biggest contributor to total revenue of KSH 195.7bn, an increase of 19.8 per cent.
Bob Collymore, Safaricom’s chief executive, acknowledged the competition being brought by the Whatsapp platform.
“Safaricom Ltd is facing international competition from companies like WhatsApp,” He said.
However, he was quick to say, “We want to be the best network for users to use when using such platforms. We would rather work with it other than be against it.”
On the growth that the company has seen with the Kenyan sports betting industry, the CEO said they cannot make a justification on how much growth they have had.
“The betting aspect in Kenya begun in July; we are happy, because we tend to be the channel through our M-Pesa. We only take the normal transaction fees,” he said.
With its customer base having risen to 7.75 per cent to 25.16m, Collymore says, “This creates more opportunities for the business to innovate and develop specific propositions for the various customer segments.”
“We continue to ensure our customers have the best network through expansion, upgrades and quality improvement by building more 2G, 3G and 4G sites, upgrading our WiMAX sites and rolling out our own fiber to more buildings and homes.”
The company will also leverage more on its data growth going forward besides expanding its network.
“Data remains our fastest growing revenue stream and we are focused on growing it further through accelerating smartphone penetration, growing 3G and 4G users, offering relevant content, driving adoption of data bundles and owning the home through our affordable 4G home broadband and fiber to the home solutions,” said Collymore.