Safaricom has recorded its first profit drop in nine years after a reduction in messaging, voice, and M-Pesa revenues this financial year.
The tough economic conditions triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, saw the telco’s net profit reduce by 6.8% to KES 68.67 billion from KES 73.65 billion the previous year.
During the period, voice revenue dropped by 6% to KES 82.55 billion while messaging revenue fell by 7% to KES 13.60 billion.
M-Pesa revenue also recorded a 2.1% fall to KES 82.64 billion, accounting for 33.0% of the total service revenue, down from 33.6% last year.
“The Covid-19 pandemic brought about socio-economic challenges that disrupted our customers, strained the consumer wallet and businesses across the country. We were not spared either,” said Peter Ndegwa, Safaricom CEO.
Safaricom clarifies that the 0.6% drop was caused by the waiver for transactions below KES 1000, which saw free transactions worth KES 4.4 billion processed.
Working from home and a general upsurge in internet usage explains why the mobile data business soared registering double-digit growth of up to 11.5% accounting for KES 44.79 billion of the total service revenue.
Safaricom recorded a total service revenue of KES 250.35 billion, a 0.3% decline from the previous year.
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Alfred Gitonga is a passionate tech news writer with a deep interest in smartphones and related technologies. He is a staff writer at Mobitrends.co.ke.
