Safaricom Profit Drops By 10% On Difficult Business Environment.

November 14, 2022

1 minute read

During the period under review, Safaricom’s total revenue jumped by 4.6 per cent to $1.3b (KShs153.4 billion).

Kenya’s telco Safaricom has recorded a 10 per cent drop in net profit to $275.15 million (KShs33.5 billion) for the six months ended September. The decline is attributed to the impact of Safaricom’s financing costs for its Ethiopian investment, the introduction of the mobile termination rate (MTR), and a challenging macroeconomic and regulatory environment.

“Given the impact of the Mobile Termination Rates from $0.0081 (KShs 0.99) to $0.0048 (KShs 0.58), a slowdown in business operations due to the elections period, increase in taxation on sim cards and mobile phones and a failed rain season leading to more economic hardship for the country, Safaricom has done very well to deliver these results,” Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa said on Friday.

During the period under review, Safaricom’s total revenue jumped by 4.6 per cent to $1.3b (KShs153.4 billion) buoyed by an 8.7 per cent jump in M- Pesa revenue to $466.8M (KShs56.9 billion), and an 11.3 per cent increase in data earnings to $215.8m (KShs26.3 billion).

Voice revenue fell by 3.8 per cent to $327.3m (KShs39.9billion), while total costs rose by a third to $254.31 (KshSh31 billion) due to the firm’s investment in Ethiopia.

Ndegwa, however, said the Company was optimistic about its investment in Ethiopia noting that it had 740,000 subscribers by the end of October and generated $ 806,398 (KSh98.3 million) in revenue from the new market in the first month of operation.

Startup

Mark-Zuckerberg-Metaverse-1024x682-1 - Skillmine Opportunities

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder Meta, has announced a series of AI projects that he hopes will help fuel the future of the Metaverse

New artificial intelligence projects have been unveiled by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, who believes AI is “the key to unlocking the Metaverse”. Zuckerberg believes the metaverse, a futuristic concept of virtual spaces in which users may work, socialize, and play, will be the mobile internet’s future. He demonstrated the AI functionality Builder Bot in a livestreamed demonstration by creating a basic virtual world with an island, trees, and a beach. Meta is working on a new class of generative AI models, according to Zuckerberg, that will allow anyone to define a world and generate elements of it. Meta said in January that it has begun work on a new AI supercomputer that, when completed in mid-2022, will be the fastest in the world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off an AI concept known as Builder Bot in a presentation, where zuckerberg emerged as a 3D character on an island and provided verbal commands to create a beach and then add clouds and trees. In addition, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta was developing a universal speech translator that would enable instantaneous speech-to-speech translation in any language. Meta is working on AI research to allow users to have more natural interactions with voice assistants, according to Zuckerberg, a move as to how people will eventually connect with AI in the metaverse. Meta said it was using the model in its Portal video-calling gadget and hoped to include it into augmented reality and virtual reality devices in the future. Meta is looking into how artificial intelligence can be used to control content and activity in the metaverse.. For the past decade, Facebook has been investing in Artificial intelligence.

byHenry Cobblah