Safaricom saw its service revenue grow by 14.8% to Kshs 204.1bn driven predominantly by growth in active users and increased usage of non–voice services mainly M-PESA and Mobile data in the year ended 31st March 2017.
The firm saw its non-voice service revenue account for 54.2% of service revenue, recording a growth of 27.3% to Kshs 110.7bn. Overall voice service revenue stood at 45.8% of service revenue and remained resilient in the year growing by 2.9% to Kshs 93.5bn.
According to Bob Collymore, Safaricom Limited CEO,“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.
Safaricom’s customer base grew by 11.8% to 28.1m as at 31 March 2017 an its M-PESA revenue grew 32.7% to Kshs 55.1bn driven by 14.6 % increase in 30 day active M-PESA customers to 19.0m and a 35.0% growth in monthly usage per customer to 10.0 transactions per month.
“Our cashless platform, Lipa na M-PESA, continues to be adopted by enterprises as a preferred payment platform. We now have over 50k merchants who are active on a 30 day basis,” added Collymore.
In the same period, mobile data revenue accounted for 14.3% and grew at 38.5% to Kshs 29.3bn driven by 18.1% growth in 30 day active mobile data customers to 16.6m, increased bundle users and smartphone penetration. Safaricom’s Fixed data revenue increased by 37.4% to Kshs 5.2bn attributed to 21.2% growth in fixed service customers. In the year under review we invested Kshs 35.3bn on capital expenditure.
In light of the encouraging financial performance, the Safaricom Board recommended a dividend of Kshs 0.97 per share – an increase of 27.5%. Pending approval by shareholders. The firm will therefore pay out a dividend of Kshs 38.86bn, which represents 80% of its net income, for the year ended 31 March 2017.
