{"id":50045,"date":"2026-11-05T09:54:23","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T07:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=50045"},"modified":"2026-11-05T09:54:23","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T07:54:23","slug":"kenyas-safaricom-posts-higher-first-half-profit-as-ethiopia-losses-halve","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/kenyas-safaricom-posts-higher-first-half-profit-as-ethiopia-losses-halve\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenya&#8217;s Safaricom posts higher first-half profit as Ethiopia losses halve"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Kenyan telecoms group Safaricom reported a 40% jump in first-half earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) this Thursday, helped by smaller \u200blosses at its Ethiopia unit and a strong \u200bperformance in its home market.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Safaricom, majority owned by \u2060South Africa&#8217;s Vodacom Group, said group EBIT rose \u200bto 91.1 billion Shillings ($701.58 million) in the six months to \u200bthe end of September, up from 65.2 billion Shillings (\u00a0$5.02 billion) a year earlier.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;You can see the reduction in start-up losses in Ethiopia \u200bstarting to really make impact at a group level, \u200band also the solid performance in Kenya,&#8221; Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa told \u200ca \u2060briefing.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The company maintained its full-year EBIT guidance of 180 billion Shillings ($1 billion) &#8211; 187 billion Shillings ($1 439 billion).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Group service revenue rose 13% to 226.1 billion Shillings in the first half of the financial \u200byear.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>In Ethiopia, Safaricom&#8217;s \u200bEBIT loss \u2060narrowed to 11.4 billion Shillings from 24.3 billion Shillings a year earlier.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Safaricom launched in \u200bEthiopia in 2022 when the government there \u200bstarted \u2060to open up the tightly-controlled economy to foreign competition.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It hopes its presence in Africa&#8217;s second-most populous country will power \u2060future \u200bgrowth and that it will break \u200beven by the end of this financial year<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":27653,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-50045","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Safaricom launched in \u200bEthiopia in 2022 when the government there \u200bstarted \u2060to open up the tightly-controlled economy to foreign competition.","published_date":"","news_description":"Safaricom launched in \u200bEthiopia in 2022 when the government there \u200bstarted \u2060to open up the tightly-controlled economy to foreign competition.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50047,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50045\/revisions\/50047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=50045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}