Kenya Power and Lighting Company has released its unaudited results a six-month period that ended 31st December 2016 registering a profit before tax of 5.64 billion shillings.
This year’s profit before tax is less by 97 million shillings from the 5.73 billion shillings realized in the year 2015 at the same period.
According to the management, the decline in profits before tax was as a result of the decline in finance income by 723 million shillings which was brought about by reduced bank balances.
Kenya Power has been on a massive expansion program that is aimed at bettering its electricity delivery efficient and recently, the company assured Kenyans that there would be no power shortages.
Electricity revenue, excluding foreign exchange costs, increased by 4,130 million shillings (9.9 percent) to 41,665 million shillings to 45,795 million shillings as a result of expanded customer base.
According to the management, the power purchase costs increased from 24,951 million shillings to 26,109 million shillings and this was attributed to the rise in unit purchase from 4,532 GWh the previous year to 4,786 GWh which is an increase of 254 or 5.6 percent.
Due to ongoing drought in most parts of the country, Kenya Power has had to heavily rely of fuel powered generators to generate electricity. According to the company, the costs of the fuel decreased by 1846 million shillings despite the heavy reliance from 8072 million shillings the previous year to 6226 million shillings.
The company, however, witnessed an increase in expenditure from 13,065 million shillings during the previous period to 16,157 million shillings. The increase in the expenditure was a result of company’s ambitions to improve its electricity delivery.
Finance costs on the other hand decreased to 2,281 million shillings during the year compared to 2,579 million shillings the previous year.
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