NAIROBI - Kenyan telecoms firm Safaricom posted higher ​full-year group ⁠earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) on Thursday, ‌as losses in its Ethiopia unit shrank and service ​revenue grew.

Safaricom said its EBIT rose 59% to ​153.9 billion shillings ($1.2 ​billion) in its full-year to end-March.

Safaricom, partly owned by South Africa's Vodacom and ⁠Britain's Vodafone, launched in Ethiopia in 2022 as the government there opened the closely controlled economy to foreign competition.

It said its ​EBIT loss ‌from the ⁠Ethiopian unit ⁠narrowed to 30.1 billion shillings from 61.1 billion shillings ​a year earlier.

Group service revenue ‌jumped 11% to 414.1 ⁠billion shillings, while net income was up 67% to 99.7 billion shillings, Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa said at a post-earnings investor briefing. In December, Kenya's government said it would sell a 15% stake in Safaricom to Vodacom for about $1.6 billion. The government's Safaricom stake ‌will be reduced to 20% from ⁠the current 35%. The sale is ​still awaiting the regulator's approval and the conclusion of the case challenging the transaction.

($1 = ​129.1000 Kenyan ‌shillings) (Reporting by George Obulutsa and ⁠Vincent Mumo Nzilani; ​Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Rashmi Aich)


Reuters