Safaricom sees earnings surge as Ethiopia startup losses fall
Kenyan telecoms firm Safaricom said on Friday that its earnings could surge as much as 50% this financial year as it projected that losses in key expansion market Ethiopia would fall steeply.
Safaricom, partly owned by South Africa's Vodacom and Britain's Vodafone, launched in Ethiopia in 2022 as the government there opened up the tightly-controlled economy to foreign competition.
The company has had a bumpy ride in Ethiopia due to security, inflation and currency challenges, but it remains bullish that Africa's second most-populous nation will power future growth.
CEO Peter Ndegwa told a results presentation that the company was expecting group earnings before interest and taxes of 144-billion to 150-billion Kenyan shillings (R20.26bn to R21.10bn) in the year to the end of March 2026, excluding the hyper-inflationary impact from its Ethiopian business.
That compares with EBIT of 97.1-billion shillings (R13.66bn) in the year to end-March 2025 without the hyper-inflationary impact.
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