Safaricom has recovered from a loss of over KES 3 billion to post, what the company Chairman describes as, impressive results. Kenya’s leading mobile phone service provider posted a 94% profit after tax of KES 7.8 billion for the half year ended September 2012 from KES 4 billion the previous year.

Last year, the company’s profit after tax dipped 47.4% to KES 4 billion from KES 7.6 billion in 2010.

“We are very pleased to have recovered from the damaging price wars of 2010 and 2011,” said company CEO, Bob Collymore. Speaking during the Company's Half Year announcement at the Michael Joseph Center in Nairobi, he said that the profit war driven by the strategic implementation of quality services, improved cost-efficiency and financial inclusion through the use of M-Pesa.

Safaricom Chairman, Nicholas Nganga noted that the company had been forced to deal with last year’s severely subdued macroeconomic environment. Coupled with the price wars and the volatile economy, the company’s results had been less than admirable.

Nevertheless, Safaricom managed to improve it’s free cash flow 791% to KES 5.1 billion in 2012 from KES 744 million the previous year.

Voice revenue was up 19% to 37.4 billion from KES 31.5 billion. Non-voice revenue, which includes M-Pesa, SMS and Data, jumped 28% to KES 18.7 billion.

M-Pesa revenue rose 32% to KES 10.4 billion this year from KES 7.8 billion in 2011. Also showing improvement was the number of Safaricom subscribers who rose to 19.2 million from 18 million in 2011.

What’s in Store for Safaricom’s Future?

Safaricom intends to invest in all aspects of its network. The company is optimistic about the future and expects to see low double digit growth in it’s total revenue within the coming months.

“As a business, we consider broadband to be one of our next frontiers for growth and have therefore invested in the underlying 3G, fibre and Wimax networks,” Said Collymore. He added that the company intends to launch a new range of touch smart-phones that will be 20% cheaper than the ones currently in the market.

Speaking with pesatalk, Collymore said that the new models would not completely replace the current phones. He said that they would, instead, supplement the existing stock. “Our 3G network is currently underutilized,” he told pesatalk. He also mentioned that only 10% of the market was actually using the 3G network.

He said that Safaricom is working on boosting its network speeds. The company also plans to set up a fibre network which it hopes will be the best of its kind in the country. The 5-year program is aimed at augmenting the existing fibre network that Safricom leases from other providers.

Collymore said that Safaricom will continue to deliver strong results through their core consumer business. “We will deepen financial inclusion through M-Pesa,” he added stating that the company would maintain its stance through the use of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes.