Safaricom Annual Profit Misses Forecasts on Ethiopia Losses

Safaricom Group Plc reported lower-thanexpected 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. years ago, the national manufacturing industry movement aims to enhance competitiveness by addressing bottlenecks in a sustainable, integrated, and comprehensive manner.

The Expo opened at Millennium Hall showcases the movement's activities and achievements over the past two years.

During the event, Abiy highlighted the movement's success in reducing imports, with domestic production replacing imported products worth 1.9 billion USD in the past nine months of the current Ethiopian fiscal year. The Made In Ethiopia Movement has played a significant role in harnessing the existing potential of the industry sector, contributing to its overall growth, he said.