Aside from making a 19.9% increase in net income in their financial year ending 31st March 2018, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore also announced his return to the helm of the organisation.
Speaking during the company’s Full Year investor briefing, Mr. Collymore, who has been on medical leave since October last year, noted that he was making good progress in his treatment.
.@bobcollymore makes his remarks on the #SafaricomFYResults via video ☺ (Part 1) pic.twitter.com/TmRv58ob9X
— Kenyan Collective 🇰 (@KenCollective) May 9, 2018
“I look forward to being back in action in Nairobi soon,” Collymore said as he announced a 10 per cent growth in revenue to KES224.54 billion.
.@bobcollymore We sharpened our focus on delivering relevant products and services, organisational effectiveness and putting our customers first. We continued our efforts to diversify the business to support revenue generated by voice and SMS. #SafaricomFYResults #Twaweza pic.twitter.com/OKcn098DMf
— Safaricom PLC (@SafaricomPLC) May 9, 2018
Strong results despite political climate
Last year was a difficult period for businesses all over the country. According to official reports, Kenya’s economic growth slowed to 4.9% fuelled by political uncertainty as the country dealt with the effects of a prolonged electioneering period. The credit market also recorded the slowest growth in 14 years, attributed to the interest rate capping and reduced economic activity.
Despite this, Safaricom saw a strong performance that was supported mainly by growth in the digital economy, mobile telephony, e-commerce, online training, tax administration, among others.
Twaweza
Through the spirit of Twaweza, Safaricom has been able to leverage their partnerships and delivered access to quality, affordable sevices like healthcare through M-Tiba, a partnership with PharmAccess and Carepay; Empowering farmers to scale through mobile technology through DigiFarm and overall, transforming lives in over 80,000 community projects across the country.
Safaricom Foundation has also refreshed its strategy guided by these three focused pillars: Putting the customer first, Delivering relevant products and services, and Ensuring excellence in operations. More on the new strategy will be shared next week.
Numbers
- Service revenue grew at a strong rate of 10.0%
- Over 1 million customers have signed onto M-TIBA with over Kshs 200m paid out in more than 100k healthcare visits
- 4G is now covering approximately 1600 sites. Safaricom Home fibre roll out now covers more than 5,000 km and 141,000 households so far with more homes being connected this year
- M-PESA & Mobile data continue to be the drivers contributing 73% of the growth in the year. Mpesa grew by 14% and contributed 38% and mobile data grew by 24% YoY contributing 35% of the growth for the year.
- M-PESA Revenue now stands at Kshs 62.9 billion, Lipa na M-PESA transactions grew to 147.6 million & a growth of 156k M-PESA agents so far
- M-Shwari and KCB M-PESA both issue out around 3 loans per second
- Data usage per subscriber has grown by 56% to 421MB from 269MB last year.
- Their network grew to 4,945 sites including 1,648 4G sites and 4,183 3G sites.
The sustained demand for data remains a key growth driver for the company, with mobile data revenue increasing by 24% to KES36.36 billion.
- Customer numbers grew to 29.6M, adding 1.4M new customers in FY18