•This will form part of a period under whose one quarter run without the former CEO Bob Collymore death in July, who has spearheaded the company to multi-billion worth over his over 10-year tenure and now valued more than $11 billion.
•Despite the race to increase returns to investors, the company's shares price trading on the NSE board has remained stagnant over the six months, oscillating around the Sh28 mark.
Safaricom PLC will on Friday announce its half-year results with indications performance will exceed that of the same period last year.
In the financial year 2018/2019 half years results for the period ended September 30 2018, the firm announced Sh31.5 billion net profit, representing a 20.2 per cent increase compared to Sh26.2 billion recorded within the previous period in 2017.
M-Pesa was the main driver of growth for the period, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the profit. The firm has since introduced Fuliza, a mobile lending up linked to M-Pesa.
According to Standard Investment bank (SIB), Fuliza disbursed an estimated Sh81 billion in loans in the six months to June.
The digital product is owned in partnership with two entities Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) now NCBA and KCB Group with a revenue share split of 40:40:20.
NCBA bank and Safaricom collect 40 percent each of the revenues while KCB gets 20 percent.
The telco went for one quarter without a substantive chief executive following the death of Bob Collymore in July
His predecessor Michael Joseph has been acting. Last Friday the firm appointed global brewer Diageo executive Peter Ndegwa who assumes office in April as the new CEO.
The company's share price at the NSE board has remained stagnant over the six months, oscillating around the Sh28 mark.
It touched Sh29.45 on August 19 but dropped by Sh2 to Sh26.20 on September 3. Last January it touched a record high of Sh30 but failed to go past the mark.
On Wednesday, the average share price was Sh28.90 with 4.31 million shares valued at Sh124.44 million traded
Safaricom has also seen a drop in market share on mobile subscribers falling to 63.5 per cent in the year ended June, according to the latest data by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA).
Even with the highest number of subscribers at 31.8 million compared to other operators, the drop was significant from market share held in last year at 65.4 per cent.
The fresh results come days after the appointment of Diageo PLC’s Managing Director Peter Ndegwa as the CEO effective April 2020.
This ended the speculation of the future of the telco. Ndegwa will take over from Michael Joseph, the interim CEO.
In the full-year results for the period ending March 31 this year, the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed company announced Sh62.49 billion profit, a 14.7 per cent rise compared to Sh 55.29 billion for the same period in 2018.
During the period, the company had an operating income of Sh124.30 billion compared to 112.83 billion in 2018.
This was over revenue streams from increase in 7.7 per cent increase in customer base to 31.8 million, supported by income from mobile money service M-Pesa, mobile data and fixed data growing returns for investors.
This was also coupled by expansion fibre rollout and growth of Fuliza which served as new product innovations to increase returns for the investors.