Safaricom Group Plc reported lower-than-expected annual profit after the Kenyan telecommunications giant’s unit in neighboring Ethiopia booked losses in its first full year of operations.
Net income rose 1.2% to 62.99 billion shillings ($479.2 million) in the year through March 31, the Nairobi-based company said in a statement Thursday, missing the 67.6 billion-shilling median estimate by analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Its Kenyan unit reported $1.07 billion in operating profit, the first time that the measure exceeded the billion-dollar mark.
“This is no mean feat — there’s no other company in our region that has achieved this,” Chairman Adil Khawaja said at an investor briefing in Nairobi.
The shares rose 3.7% by 12:46 p.m., having jumped as much as 9% in earlier trade.
East Africa’s biggest company by market value in 2022 launched operations in Ethiopia, which has the continent’s second-largest population but one of the lowest rates of mobile penetration and internet connectivity. (Bloomberg)
