Kenya Airways said on Tuesday that its pretax loss widened in the first half of this year as a weaker Kenyan shilling ate into improved revenues.

Its pretax loss rose to 21.7 billion Kenyan shillings ($149.45 million) from 9.9 billion a year earlier.

Hellen Mwariri, the airline's chief finance officer, told an investor briefing that foreign exchange losses jumped to 15.3 billion shillings from 398 million shillings in the same period in 2022.

Total revenue in the first half rose 56% to 75.1 billion shillings from 48.1 billion shillings in first half of 2022, while operating costs rose to 74.1 billion shillings from 53.1 billion shillings in the first six months of last year.

($1 = 145.2000 Kenyan shillings)

(Reporting by George Obulutsa; editing by Jason Neely and Alexander Winning)