Safaricom Posts Crazy Profits Again as Bob Announces His Return

On Wednesday, Safaricom Plc announced their financial year results, once again posting what can be termed as ‘crazy profits.’

In the results, Safaricom’s profits increased by 14.1 percent to 55.29 billion shillings for the year ending 31st March 2018.

During the period, the company witnessed its revenue grow by 10 percent to 224.54 billion shillings.

The company also received 2.1 million new customers to its M-Pesa platform driving its revenue growth by 14.2 percent to 62.91 billion shillings.

According to the announcement made by the telco, M-Pesa now contributes 28.0 percent of Safaricom’s service revenue from 20.9 percent in the financial year of 2015.

About its future plan, the company stated that it would spend between 35 billion to 38 billion shillings in expanding its infrastructure.

It was during the financial release function that Bob Collymore announced that he would be back at the helm of the company soon.

That said and done, the question that I have always been asking myself every time Safaricom releases the results is; what makes Safaricom tick? What makes them unique? What is Safaricom doing that other ailing companies in Kenya cannot do?

Let us face it. 2017 was a tough year for every business in Kenya. It was the year marred with the longest electioneering period in Kenya’s history. As if that was not enough, the opposition, National Super Alliance (NASA) sampled out Safaricom as one of the companies that had taken part in the bungled elections.

The opposition called on their supporters to boycott the products and services of the company. One would expect the profits of the company to dip. But no. they skyrocketed instead. What happened? What makes Safaricom tick?

Analysys Mason came up with a report that seemed to suggest that Safaricom was too powerful and even suggested some ways of how to ‘tame’ it including forcing it to lease out its infrastructure to its competitors at the price determined by the Communications Authority.

There are three key things that Safaricom Plc does that most ailing companies in Kenya have neglected:

• Building the corporate color: who doesn’t know the corporate color of Safaricom? This may seem small but it has really worked in leveraging Safaricom in Kenya. The color is everywhere.
• Investing in infrastructure: Safaricom invests billions of shillings in infrastructure and this is what has kept it ahead of others.
• Advertisement: Safaricom knows how to advertise its services. Simple.

What makes Safaricom tick? There you have it.