Dynamism In Technology Affects Safaricom’s Voice & Messaging Service Revenue In New Results
Newer technologies in communication have caused a tangible decline in voice and message revenue, Safaricom has said. Other platforms of voice and messaging services mostly depending on the internet have played a big part in the decline as smartphone owners adopt new ways of communicating. Messaging revenue declined by 11% to Kshs. 8.60bn while voice service revenue declined 1.4% to 46.87bn.
Also, by making it easier for the customer to manage their premium subscriptions and opt out of them were no longer needed and have contributed to the decline of both voice and messaging to 44.6% of service revenue.
Despite the decline in the two service revenues, growth in revenue for the half-year to September 2019 was 5.3% and this was highly driven by robust performance across MPESA and fixed data. Both M-Pesa and data have also seen the rise of the customer block with most first time consumers subscribing to the two services by Safaricom.
M-Pesa has grown by 18.2% YoY and this was driven by 12.4% YoY increase in 30-day active M-Pesa customers to 23.61 million and a 7.8% YoY growth in monthly usage per customer to 13 chargeable transactions per month. Safaricom added 2.6 million active M-Pesa customers with M-Pesa now accounting for 33.8% of service revenue, further accelerating the displacement of traditional voice and messaging services.
Despite a slowdown in the gaming industry, revenue grew 20.9% YoY and chargeable transactions per customer per month grew 17.5%.
Mobile & Fixed Data
Mobile data registered a 4.0% growth in revenue repositioning data bundles and absorbing the excise duty increase. Mobile data now accounts for 15.9% of service revenue and registered an impressive 14.6% growth on the revenue earned in the second half of last year. Growth in mobile data revenue is expected to return to double digits in the second half of this year driven by increased penetration and usage. Fixed data, on the other hand, registered a growth of 18.4% and contributes 3.7% of total service revenue in the period.
