Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore Twitter When it comes to profitability, Safaricom remains a trend-setter not just in Kenya but in the sub-Saharan region as well.
For the last 10 years, Kenya’s leading mobile operator has set and broken its own records on earnings – from Ksh20.9 billion in 2010 to Ksh55.29 billion in the full-year ending 31st March 2018.
Any company would love such big profits but very few are daring enough to reinvest most of their earnings to strengthen market position and to grow future revenues .
Listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) and with annual revenues in excess of Ksh150 billion, Safaricom, for instance, invested Ksh32.13 billion in infrastructure in 2017 to provide over 78% of Kenya’s population with 3G coverage and 2G coverage to 95% of Kenyans. Safaricom Customer care employees at work The mobile operator also poured money into harnessing proprietary fibre infrastructure to build a dedicated enterprise business, which provides managed IT services to clients in the East African region.
It is this kind of investment that saw Safaricom pioneer commercial mobile money transfer globally through M-PESA, the most successful service of its kind anywhere in the world.
In the first half of the current financial year alone, the company already invested Ksh17 billion driven by increased network roll-out and acceleration of broadband and fibre deployment, according to a commentary by CEO Bob Collymore while releasing half year results for the period ending September 2018.
This continued investment in network has enhanced quality of service and coverage, with 4G now extending to 53%, up 21 percentage points year on year.
With M-PESA now accounting for 30% of total service revenue, Safaricom is, understandably, excited about the future prospects of portfolio expansion and diversification.
Strategic Investments
Its growth is being noticed even away from home. In August 2018, Safaricom was recognized as one of the companies tackling public health, environmental, economic and other society challenges as part of its every day operations, emphasizing how the telco has invested in each sector to ensure sustainability of the environment in which it operates.
According to Fortune Magazine ’s ‘Change the World’ list, Safaricom – with an estimated market value of $11,339 million (Ksh1.13 trillion) – has used its M-PESA platform to impact millions of people’s lives.M-PESA, launched in 2007, has more than 30 million customers in 10 countries , mostly in remote areas far from banks, powered by a strong network infrastructure that cobbles […]