Kenya Power Runs Into Losses Again

Kenya Power and Lighting Company has run into losses again, this time reporting a drop by 16 percent in its half-year profits of six months to December 2018, to 2.46 billion shillings.

Stats released by the company showed how the power distributor’s profit dropped despite an increase in revenue which spiked by 3.4 percent to 69.37 billion shillings.

Sales from electricity increased by 21.4 percent to 56.96 billion shillings in the wake of increased consumption from Kenyan households.

According to the results from Kenya Power and Lighting Company, the 2.46 billion shilling loss was attributed to the increase of 4 percent in operating expenses that spiked from 59.3 billion shillings to 61.7 billion shillings.

During the period, the costs for non-fuel increased by 18.8 percent to 32.6 billion shillings. The power units purchased during the period increased by 9 percent to 5,324-gigawatt hours from the initial 46,931-gigawatt hours.

The cost of transmission and distribution of power increased by 37 percent (5.89 billion shillings) to 21.7 billion shillings. Fuel costs dropped by 44 percent to 6.88 billion shillings according to the management.

However, Kenya Power and Lighting Company is still operating with negative capital. Its current liabilities are 1.9 times higher than the current assets attributed to the rush by the government to connect more households to the grid.

Currently, Kenya Power seems to be running on the wheels of debts with the company owing 115.7 billion shillings in debts. 16.8 billion shillings of the total debt is set to mature in 12 months while the remaining 99 billion shillings will take longer than a year to mature.