Kenya’s biggest telecommunication company Safaricom Limited has recorded a net profit of 45.1 billion shillings for the Financial Year ended March 2017. According to the statement released by the telecommunicator, the net profit was an increase by 18.3 percent from 38.1 billion shillings realized in 2015.
Safaricom Board on the other hand has extended Bob Collymore’s tenure by 2 years from August 2017, for steering the firm through difficult times. There were rumors that Collymore would be exiting the firm upon the expiry of his term.
The telecommunicator contributes on average 6.5 percent of Kenya’s GDP annually while providing employment to 845,000 Kenyans.
“We continue to focus on building a resilient business that can weather the regulatory and economic forces that are currently shaping the commercial environment. We believe in the vast, untapped potential of the Kenyan economy, and we will leverage increasingly intimate customer insights alongside deep investments in critical technologies to drive a long-term strategy for growth. We remain steadfast in delivering our corporate strategy, guided by three key pillars; putting our customers’ first, providing relevant products and enhancing our operational excellence. This has continued to grow our loyal customer base and produce excellent results across our key financial and commercial performance indicators,” said Bob Collymore, the company’s CEO.
Service revenue grew by 14.8 percent to 204.1 billion shillings driven predominantly by growth in active users and increased usage of non–voice services mainly M-PESA and Mobile data. Non-voice service revenue accounted for 54.2 percent of service revenue, recording a growth of 27.3 percent to 110.7 billion shillings. Overall voice service revenue now stands at 45.8 percent of service revenue and remained resilient in the year growing by 2.9 percent to 93.5 billion shillings.