Caroline Wambugu: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone joining us at this point for our H1 2027 Earnings investor call. Indeed, we are glad to be having this session with you. My name is Caroline Wambugu, and I serve as the Director of Group Finance Controls, Performance, and Investor Relations here at Safaricom. Always a joy to host this call for us, and I trust by now you have interacted with our materials post the release that took place this morning. Therefore, looking forward to engaging a lot more now in detail with respect to some of the things that you have picked up. On today's call, we will have an update from both our Group CEO, Peter Ndegwa, and our Group CFIO, Dilip Pal, who will just give some very brief updates, very short updates indeed, just with respect to the results that we announced earlier today.
Caroline Wambugu: Thereafter, we will open it up to questions and answers. But before we do so, just some quick housekeeping rules. First, just ensure you have joined with your full name so that we can easily identify you. If you haven't done so, feel free to just click on the rename on Zoom for purposes of just renaming yourself. Throughout this session, we want to use the Q&A tab. So if you could please post your questions on the Q&A tab, and we will be able to read them out on your behalf for purposes of our leaders engaging with you through the responses. In staying committed to our diversity and inclusion promise, we do, of course, have a live transcript that has been made available, so you can access it by clicking the CC tab on the bottom of your Zoom application.
Caroline Wambugu: Finally, should you require any other form of assistance that is not necessarily linked to the discussion at hand, feel free to chat with the investor relations team on the backend using the chat platform. So we use the Q&A tab for questions and answers, and then, of course, we use the chat platform for any other unrelated queries, which we will be able to respond to you on. For now, allow me to invite our Group CEO, Peter Ndegwa, to give his remarks. Peter.
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah. So thank you, Caroline, and good evening, good afternoon, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. As Caroline has said, we presented our results this morning. So we are assuming that you have seen the materials, which has already been posted on the website, and that you will have detailed questions for us. So, we will try and keep the session primarily for that session. That said, Dilip Pal and I will do a few summary remarks or comments just to highlight and signpost the nature of, or the framing of the results that we announced. We are also joined by a number of key exec or LT team that I work with, in particular Wim from Ethiopia, and also some of the other guys. So if I feel that there's a question that can be answered by them, I will ask them to answer.
Peter Ndegwa: So starting with operating environment in both countries. Kenya operating environment remains relatively resilient, especially when you look at the economic growth parameters have been stable, and also currency has been stable for a very long time. So that's good. However, and especially in relation to the Middle East crisis, we see pressure points with higher food, fuel, and transport costs, which have now started to put quite a lot of pressure on both households, but also businesses in terms of air costs. Therefore, from a business perspective, it reinforces the importance of delivering greater value to customers, and especially affordability being a key pressure point. Even when we do our NPS, net promoter score, we normally see that as rating, as one of the highest rated items. Give us quality service, and reliable service, but give us at the right cost.
Peter Ndegwa: We also, from a regulatory perspective, I think the telco side is relatively stable, although the satellite piece is still yet to be fully concluded. But the area that we see a lot more pressure on the Kenya side is a number of regulations that are coming through on the fintech side. We continue, as always, to constructively engage with the government and regulators and industry stakeholders to be able to navigate through those. In Ethiopia, we remain confident in the very long-term opportunity of our business. The economy, especially having navigated through the elections and government formed, continues to navigate key macros, inflation, which is double digits now to around 15%, and also currency pressures. But we have seen, just like Kenya, impact of the Middle East crisis, especially fuel supply, which affected both cost but also our own ability to deliver on site rollout.
Peter Ndegwa: But those have moderated a bit. But on the regulatory side, as we said earlier, the support that has come from the regulator has been positive, and we've made progress. But we need more support on the cost-led pricing, which has been slower than we expected. We hope that with elections behind and also the government formed, that these interventions can be progressed, and we are following through with engaging various parties on that. Despite this, for Ethiopia, the business continues to gain scale with growing customers, improving our network, our utilization. As you know, we were not putting a lot of investment this year. It was about sweating the assets. We're also seeing some green shoots in terms of increasing M-PESA adoption, especially on the merchant payments. Our focus in H2 remains sustaining this momentum in Ethiopia and progressing towards the EBITDA break-even point.
Peter Ndegwa: You will have seen from the results that we had a small loss of KES 400 million. We are clearly on that path. In terms of business performance, Kenya delivered broad-based growth, as you have seen across all segments. Connectivity benefits from our segment-led propositions and also real drives around affordability. You see growth in customers, growth in usage, growth in engagement, including on voice, whilst mobile data is maintaining momentum, but we have corrected some pricing, which we can discuss further. On voice, the business remains largely resilient. On fixed broadband, through 5 and 5G FWA, we continue to widen the coverage to ensure that we are covering all segments of the population and ensuring that we can deliver more affordable access, including tokenized Wi-Fi, which you will be seeing when we announce our full-year results.
Peter Ndegwa: On financial services, M-PESA remains a key growth engine, which is our objective is to continue to ensure that the core apps, but increasingly diversify beyond the traditional payments. We are also scaling. As you know, we have always been very strong on the consumer side. We are now scaling the merchant propositions. There is, of course, started with payments, but now we have started going to credit. We recently launched Fuliza Ya Pochi, so Fuliza for Pochi customers, which is a microcredit, and also savings through Ziidi, which is a proposition that allows merchants to also keep excess money into Ziidi or money market funds. We continue to leverage our Fintech 2.0, which is giving us the resilience from a platform standpoint and the ability to scale our business and support the next phase of growth. You will have seen the numbers that our merchants have now crossed 4.5 million.
Peter Ndegwa: Primarily, about two-thirds is small merchants, and the balance being the Pochi customers, which is the micro merchants. We have also made real progress on credit, and now we have almost 18 million of active customers on the credit side. On fixed enterprise and public sector, we see progress, and especially on enterprise, we are starting to launch new products. SD-WAN was launched in the period. Going beyond connectivity has grown nicely. On the public sector, we are now maturing that business as some of the areas that we have supported get to scale. Ethiopia, I have already spoken about, so I will not go into detail. Just looking at the outlook, as we enter the H2, our priorities remain unchanged. We will sustain momentum across all our connectivity and financial services business in Kenya, whilst scaling growth in the fixed broadband enterprise and public sector.
Peter Ndegwa: We have started to use AI at a scale level by focusing on improvement of customer experience, decision-making, and productivity. We are starting to feel reasonably positive about the impact that AI is making, whilst ensuring that we drive AI governance to focus on trust, to ensure the network is resilient, and also our digital platforms are safe and secure. On Ethiopia, our focus is sustaining commercial momentum, deepening M-PESA usage, and getting towards the journey of breakeven. Overall, we are pleased with the H1 performance, and it gives us confidence in the execution of our full-year priorities. Therefore, we are retaining our financial year 2027 guidance and capital outlook for the period. This is supported by continued growth and consistent delivery in Kenya, and a significant reduction for our Ethiopia business of our startup losses.
Peter Ndegwa: Let me hand over to Dilip to highlight some of the key financial metrics before we open it up for questions. Dilip, over to you.
Dilip Pal: Caroline, confirm you can hear me?
Caroline Wambugu: Yes, we can hear you, Dilip. You may proceed.
Dilip Pal: Thank you, Peter. Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening, based on wherever you have joined from. Thank you for joining us. Peter has taken you through the strategic and operating progress across the group, both for Kenya and Ethiopia. I will be brief and just focus on few financial performance parameters for the H1. We delivered broad-based growth, stronger profitability, and also materially better cash generation. Kenya remained resilient and grew across all our key businesses, and Ethiopia continued to scale and move very close to EBITDA breakeven. Group EBITDA increased by 27.5% to KES 129.2 billion. You heard during this morning Peter's presentation, which is about a billion dollar, if you convert to US dollars, so it is about a billion US dollar. EBITDA margin also expanded for the group to 55.3%.
Dilip Pal: Of course, this is driven by the reduction in losses in Ethiopia, EBITDA losses in Ethiopia. Operating free cash flow improved by 59% at the group level as the requirement investment has come down and driven by lower CapEx, as well as better EBITDA performance. Kenya, very strong double-digit growth across all financial metrics. In terms of revenue, service revenue grew by 11.3%. M-PESA clearly continued to grow 13.6% and contributed 55% of the Kenya service revenue growth. Connectivity also very strong at 7.7%. Fixed services and IoT grew 25.5%, making it actually our fastest-growing business category in H1 this year. In terms of customers, you have also seen momentum. One-month active customers grew to now cross 40.6 million, and both M-PESA and fixed customers also grew double digit in this H1. Kenya EBITDA improved by 13.3%, EBIT by 13.7%, and net income by 13.8%.
Dilip Pal: M-PESA did very well. Overall quality of growth was all round. Both transactions value and volume grew. Consumer payments, business payments grew, and the best performance, of course, came from the financial services, which grew 55.3%. You would have seen a growth in financial services volume year-over-year. Financial services plus the global payments and the business payments volume growing by 56% year-over-year. Connectivity, resilient performance. Mobile data continued to grow double digit, grew 12.2%. Another data to just watch out is what we monitor very closely is the customers using more than 1 GB, which grew by 17.7% and also users growing by 9.4%. Voice had an exceptionally good performance in H1.
Dilip Pal: Revenue grew by 6.2% on the back of a 2.1% decline in H1 last year, backed by minutes of usage, which grew by 12%, supported by our affordable and very customized customer and the offers that we have been running for our voice customers. In terms of cost, we maintained discipline. Overall operating expenses grew by 9.3%. Of course, this is below service revenue growth. The growth mainly driven by inflation-led cost, mostly coming from energy cost grew by 22% due to Middle East crisis that we have seen. We have spoken about it before as well. That is why energy cost continues to be in our watch list. From a direct cost, I must, again, I presented this morning and I spoken about it. Our headline direct cost increased by 12.4%. However, this includes a derecognition of, we changed our accounting policy of SIM card-related accounting.
Dilip Pal: We derecognized deferred SIM-related costs following a reassessment under IFRS. That impact, if you exclude, actually normalized direct cost grew by 3.8%. I think on the group level, you saw operating expenses decline, but that is mainly driven by reduction in foreign exchange losses in Ethiopia, which was significantly lower this year compared to last year. Ethiopia, I think Peter Ndegwa gave a very good overview on the operating side. We continue to see growth momentum. In ETB terms, revenue doubled. Mobile data continues to be the main growth driver, contributing 74% of the growth, and you have seen that average consumption, average GB consumption per customer per month is growing, and also you have seen a growth in ARPU by about 50%. I think just to summarize, from a performance perspective, we have seen in the H1 strong execution across all three dimensions of the group.
Dilip Pal: Kenya delivered resilient broad-based growth and strong cash generation. M-PESA continued to expand beyond payments, and Ethiopia moved materially closer to profitability, and we maintained discipline in cost, capital allocation, and the balance sheet. With that, we enter the H2 with clearly good momentum while remaining focused on our execution and sustainable returns. That is all I wanted to update you, and now over to I think we will go to the Q&A, and over to you, Caroline, for the Q&A. Thank you.
Caroline Wambugu: All right. Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter and Dilip, for that great overview. Yes, we have some great questions coming through, so thank you to all of you for the questions that you are posting. Happy to dive now into it. A good number of questions speaking to mobile data, and a few others also are just making reference to the EBIT guidance being conservative. Let us dive into this one, and I will start with you, Peter. A question here from Maddie, and thank you, Maddie, also for congratulating us on our great results. The leadership team is on the call. We receive it with thanksgiving. The question is, what is the impact that we expect to see, or rather, can you please discuss the key regulatory changes in Kenya's Fintech space, and what are the risks? Peter, if I can hand that over to you.
Caroline Wambugu: Maybe we combine it with a question from Rohit of Citi, asking, "What kind of impact do you expect from the NPS Bill, particularly on competitive environment with interoperability, and do you expect any incremental investment or compliance costs?" I think you could address those two together. Over to you, Peter.
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Rohit, and also Maddie. Yeah, this is an area that we are looking at and actually staying very close. On the NPS Bill, we have given our input as they actually prepare and finalize on areas that we were concerned about. This was always coming, so we believe that some of the elements that the Central Bank is speaking about are actually appropriate and important. The whole piece about continuing to drive and progress the interoperability journey, and actually, we are very, very happy with that. The one area that we were not as comfortable is the piece around will data be shared, and we have given our own input, and I would rather that we wait for the finalization of that whole process to be completed.
Peter Ndegwa: But usually, there is a process we call public participation in this country, and we usually get an opportunity to really input into the process. On the digital currency piece, we see, again, opportunities. Kenya is one of the first countries to actually make progress in this area. It is still unclear how it will evolve over time, and we are assessing what our play should be and what licensing is required. As you know, we have our SMTSL business, which is the international money transfer. We should be able to cover some of those components. But over time, we will be able to guide you on how this evolves. As you know, this is still a work in progress in many countries.
Peter Ndegwa: The reason why we have highlighted it is to say that we are very, very much aware that this is an evolving space, and we need to be very close to it so that we understand the impact on our business. But so far, we believe that it is manageable, and it is one that allows us to expand our offerings, but also ensure that we deal with any downside risk and also governance. Dilip, please feel free to add if I have missed anything.
Dilip Pal: Thank you, Peter. I think you have covered everything. One of the positive parts of the recommendation is also a perpetual license for payment service provider. As you know, this is an annually renewable license regime that we had in the past, so that is also a positive one, I think, which is welcomed by the industry.
Caroline Wambugu: All right. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Dilip. Now I will still be back to the data question, and this one I want to request, Dilip, if you could respond. The question is from Tim Staermose of African Lions Fund. It is a two-pronged question, speaking to the low data usage in Kenya in comparative, but also a bit of the cannibalization of data from the fixed wireless business. So the question is, I note the average usage is about 5 GB per month in Kenya, but quite a bit higher in Ethiopia at 7 GB, yet this is still much lower than some comparable operators in other parts of Africa, such as Ghana, where average is as high as 19 GB. So the question being, why do you think that this is the case?
Caroline Wambugu: Is it to do with network conditions and modernization, or is it perhaps that more people in Kenya use data at their formal workplaces, or fibre-to-home, high-speed home internet being more widespread? Or is it that people typically have more than one SIM and also use data services from your competitor? Related to this is a question on, he sees operators in Uganda reporting that widespread resale of data from fixed wireless consumers is causing a drop-off in data growth on their mobile networks. Do we see that possibility becoming a threat in Kenya? Dilip, I think you've been given some good multiple choices there, but over to you.
Dilip Pal: Yes. No, thank you. Very good question. I think this is one comparison we Safaricom Kenya is on a benchmark. They probably beat many other competitors. I think this is one area where we are definitely lagging. With our own operations in Ethiopia, we have seen that they are at 7.7 GB growing, and in Kenya, it is just about 5.3 GB. I think Fawzia is also on the call. First, I see this as an opportunity. One of the numbers that for you to watch out, and that is why I think some way, the opportunity as well as the problem lies is, we have more than 34 million 4G+ devices in our network, and about 15 million customers are using more than 1 GB. That is clearly an opportunity. Of course, people have multiple SIMs they use, they optimize.
Dilip Pal: But I think just about half of the 4G+ devices, less than half of the 4G+ devices using 1 GB+ is really a small number. They use a lot at that level, which means that the rest of the customers, they are optimizing. Maybe they have more than one SIM, and they are some of the areas that you highlighted. I mean, they are not alien to Kenyan market. Yes, even the unlicensed or not required to take any license, there are operators who can actually just start a business relying on some of the wholesalers. This is very real, and that is happening. The only thing probably we do not still have an assessment of to what extent that is cannibalizing.
Dilip Pal: I think at the stage where we are, and a market which is a bit advanced, a market which is a bit more mature, then this becomes a part of the discussion. But we are still at the growing phase. You asked whether we have an access issue. No, we do not have, because pretty much we have covered the country with 4G, and we have almost one-third of our base stations are now covered with 5G, and we are expanding. We have a very generous spectrum portfolio that we have, which means that it is nothing to do with capacity or investment we have not made because of which the usage is lower. I think it is a combination of that, how do we stimulate growth? How do we probably understanding a little bit more about what is going on in some of the emerging areas, whether those are cannibalizing?
Dilip Pal: And that is why in the morning, Peter Ndegwa spoke about our ambition to be inclusive even in the fixed data, where we have launched tokenized services, we launched affordable housing. There are many areas that we think are an opportunity. Yes, there would be a shift between that fixed data and mobile data. I think ultimately we have to see whether together we are growing, and together whether the market is moving to better shape. But clearly, this is an opportunity, and as I mentioned to you, it is really the base which is not using as much as you would have expected them to use, is what is causing that. On Ethiopia's side, remember, we are 60% population coverage. The price levels are significantly low. So, I think when 4G opened up, customers just leapt up, and we had a fantastic network which Wim's team has built.
Dilip Pal: And it is no wonder that 74% of the revenue comes from mobile data, because we run a very good network, very good mobile data services, and many customers are finding our network much better than probably the industry. So that is why you see the early adopters are using more and more, also driven by affordability. I think if, Fawzia, you are on the call, in case you want to add.
Fawzia Ali: I am. Yeah, I can add.
Dilip Pal: Go ahead.
Fawzia Ali: Good evening, everyone. So, I think Dilip has actually mentioned it quite well. I think the way to look at it is two-pronged. What drives mobile data usage? Of course, pricing is there, but also the element of fiber maturity. We actually carry an equivalent volume of traffic that we carry on mobile data on our fiber network. That just tells you that our really heavy users cannot even be completely satisfied on mobile, and that's why they would prefer to use our high-speed network, which is fiber. You can imagine, and you've seen the numbers, the number of customers we have on fiber are actually pushing the equivalent volume that we have on our mobile network. What that tells you is our customers are really using a lot. Secondly, the type of device also determines the usage of a customer.
Fawzia Ali: We see that a 3G device, a customer is pushing about 2 GB, 2.5 GB, but the minute you get to a 5G device, customers are pushing north of 10 GB, going to 15 GB. Then, of course, and then the third thing, like Dilip said, as we bring more customers into the category, one of the numbers you'll see us tracking is the number of customers who are what we call giga. How many data customers are actually using more than 1 GB? Every time you're moving customers from 2G to 4G, 5G, we have to teach them, we have to show them the benefit of actually being on the internet. As we do, then they actually become what we call really data customers or a giga customer, customers using more than 1 GB. Currently, 50% of our base is giga.
Fawzia Ali: So, one, it shows we have a huge opportunity to continue to accelerate, because now we have the customer who has the device, now we need to continue to help them increase their usage. Secondly, the super users, we'll offload them onto fibre and 5G. Then, of course, finally, continuing to look for relevant use cases that really meet the needs of the customer. If it's farming, if agriculture is what is important, how do we make that available to you so that you can see the benefit? Every time we show our customers something that is useful for their life every day, we see the usage going up. Clearly a great opportunity here in terms of the runway for growth that we have. Thank you. Back to you, Carol.
Caroline Wambugu: Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you very much, Fawzia, and thank you, Dilip. Still staying with data, more questions here, and I'll combine the question from Tracy and from Maddie. With respect to the deceleration in revenue growth for this H1, especially looking at the growth we recorded last half and in the H2 of last year. The concern is this deceleration in growth something to worry about? If I might just read Maddie's question on it, he's asking, "What is the driver when you look at the fact that the growth rate for this H1 has declined for data?" I'll hand it back to you again, Dilip, but happy for Fawzia also to chime in.
Dilip Pal: To Tracy and Maddie, yes, I think we grew 15%, and then this is 12.2%. If I get your questions, is that, is this a worrying sign for the balance of the year or in terms of our medium to long-term outlook for mobile data? The answer is no, simply because of the opportunity that I defined. From our medium-term, what we call, not guidance, but an outlook, remember we have spoken about connectivity revenue growing over inflation. Within that, we said that we will grow mobile data by double digits. We still absolutely sure that this is something can happen. Sometimes you also have to think about overall connectivity revenue, I think it is one of the best performances that we had, it grew 7.7%. You are looking at mobile data, but you also have to look at mobile data and voice together. Voice grew 6.2%.
Dilip Pal: Minutes are growing. Specific to mobile data, I think normally what we see when there are price, affordability, the giving more value to our customers, we came out with new bundle propositions in August as part of our Pata More campaign, giving more to the customers. We did notice that there is a kind of the prices come, it is not necessarily overall headline prices, but there have been values. In the past, you have seen when the prices are coming down, you start seeing usage growth. In H1, although this happened only in August, we have not seen within September a material increase in the usage to compensate for some of the values that you have given to the customer. It is a combination of usage and the price, which obviously is what is showing down.
Dilip Pal: In the past, whenever there are price came down, prices have been quite stable in this market. Whenever the prices came down, affordability led to a more usage growth, but it is too early. That is what I am saying, we need to watch out for our H2 performance to be able to see how we. To answer your question, this deceleration is not a warning sign. As I explained to you, we are growing our 4G+ devices in network. We are growing the customers who are using more than 1 GB per month. That is also growing by 15%, 16%. I think that is what will be our focus to ensure that we grow our mobile data.
Caroline Wambugu: Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dilip, for that.
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah. So, Caroline, I wanted to add that, just to add to Tracy's question, to what Dilip has said. On pricing, we also wanted to start shifting customers from what we call hourly, which is very short-dated propositions and bundles, to daily, weekly, monthly. So, if you are doing daily, you can go to weekly. If you are doing weekly, you probably should go to monthly. As a result of that, we really increased the resources, if you say, the digital resource that was available for those who are choosing daily, weekly, and monthly. We've seen significant acceleration in usage.
Peter Ndegwa: However, the daily ones have tailed back, and that's the intention, because if you have very short-dated propositions, you probably don't allow the customers to really fulfill the needs that they have, and they don't have enough from a value perspective to feel that they're getting what they need. The other element that we are really focusing on is start to offer more limited hourly during the off-peak so that we avoid the peak element. So, we are seeing progress, especially on daily, which is a very good sweet spot. If that continues, we should over time see more usage when people have a worry-free way of using mobile data rather than everyone thinking that they might run out of data.
Caroline Wambugu: Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Peter Ndegwa. Now I want to request Wim, if you could respond to a question here on Ethiopia before we get back to Kenya and talk about M-PESA. So the question is from Jono Bradley, who is with Absa. Yes, Jono, thank you for the congratulatory message on the strong results. So the question reads, "Can you give some color on the current situation in Ethiopia and if there has been any impact on your operations so far?" Wim.
Wim Vanhelleputte: Okay. Thanks, Caroline, for that question. So the impact, I suppose you're referring to, is on recent developments around the situation in Tigray, I suppose. In total, we had about 250 sites that were off for about a week around the end of September, and we were forcefully switched off by the rebel movement. They've been able to quickly get restored. So today, the impact is very limited, although the situation remains a bit volatile. It's not fully resumed to what it was before, but it is quite manageable, and we don't have at this stage any long-term impact, nor on people, nor on our assets, and also not on our day-to-day operations. So, limited impact.
Caroline Wambugu: Thank you. Thank you very much, Wim, for that. Coming back to Kenya, I will request Dilip, if you could respond to a question here. Quite a bit of questions on M-PESA. I think an acknowledgment that M-PESA has recorded good growth in this past half. A question here from Johannes of 337 Frontier. "Can you comment on the increase in merchant connections, Lipa and Pochi, and what is the outlook? How many more can you connect, and who are the competitors here?" Yes, to you, Dilip.
Dilip Pal: Thank you. Thank you for your question. I think you have to put this under 2 buckets. One is the formal merchants and the informal merchants. You saw the number. Total merchant number is 4.5 million, out of which 3.2 million is the informal merchants, what we call Pochi, and the formal merchants is 1.3 million. To give you a color of informal merchants, it could be anyone. Anybody who runs a small business along with whatever they do, they work or they do anything else, can also run a small business. This part of the world, it is quite common to have that. There are many people who hustle beyond what they do. Pochi actually allowed that.
Dilip Pal: We found this problem, and we wanted to solve it without necessarily creating a lot of documentation and a lot of requirements for a formal merchant process which goes in, which is what mostly in the domain of everybody looks at the formal merchants. This one was easy. You divide your wallet to business and your personal, and then you are able to keep records of. That is how the first business, you can say, use cases started. Over a period of time, I think you heard Peter presenting this morning, we have spoken about it. We started with that, but then we now expanded to build solutions, including credit. We just launched credit for Pochi. From an opportunity perspective, I think the pace of, you saw the numbers. 4 years back, we did not have a. There is no Pochi business, 4 years back.
Dilip Pal: Last year to this year, H1, we doubled our Pochi merchants. I think that number you can expect to grow significantly because, as I said, the opportunity is much bigger. Anybody who has a small business, they can become part of Pochi. When it comes to Lipa na M-PESA or the formal merchants, I mean, they have many segments of merchants from hospitality, big hotels, to supermarkets, to small markets. That part is not unlimited. Depending on how you are looking at it, you could say the total could be in the range of, say, 3 million, not more than that, or even could be even lower than that. I think the formal merchants, you will not see the pace of growth as much as you have seen so far.
Dilip Pal: And 5 years back, I think we just had 150,000 formal merchants, and now we have about, as I said, it is about 1.3 million. But what happens is that we are building solutions and treating merchants as a customer. In the past, when we started this merchant, which is basically payment enablement, a customer going to a merchant place to make the payments. But I think what we did not do well back then is considering merchants as also a customer and start building solutions. What is their needs, not only of payment enablement for the customers, but they also need many other things, including credit. That is how all this wealth management, credit, everything, these are now available to Pochi as well as to the formal merchants. I think this is an exciting area, and that is why you saw the presentation slides.
Dilip Pal: We have actually dedicated separate section to give you a split of that, how it is growing, what is the kind of volume, values, growth, which is driving, because you are now building one more case for them to stay within the Safaricom ecosystem. But what we have also done as part of our giving back value to our customers, including merchants, part of Pata More campaign in August, which I have spoken about for mobile data, we actually introduced, or we have introduced something exciting for the merchants, both for Pochi as well as for Lipa na M-PESA. The zero-rate transaction for Pochi used to be only up to KES 100. We have increased the limit to KES 200, so that the engagement goes up. And then for merchants, the formal merchants, the earlier limit for merchants free transaction was up to KES 200, that we increased to KES 500.
Dilip Pal: And you saw that, I think in my slides I presented, the growth has been phenomenal, I mean, in terms of volumes and values. We also introduced something very interesting that we have not spoken for long, and we are very keen to grow on that, what we call transacting merchants or transacting till. The money they collect, they use it ultimately. Now, what they use it for is what we are building use cases. So, we have actually reduced the tariffs for that part of transacting tills, downstream transactions by 50%, allowing the merchants to have the flexibility to pay for everything that they have to use it for most of the. I think this space is something we are very excited about, and there is a lot of focus in building solutions both for Pochi as well as for merchants.
Dilip Pal: I hope that answers your question, Johannes.
Caroline Wambugu: Yeah, thank you very much for that, Dilip. I will pick another set of multi-questions still on M-PESA in Kenya, and especially now around financial services. Farouk, thank you for your question. Farouk is with All Africa Partners, and I will combine your question with Tracy's question on financial services. The question I will request that, Dilip, if you could respond to this one. Financial services growth in M-PESA at 55% was 3 times higher than payments. What portion of M-PESA revenues can come from financial services, I guess, in future, versus the 7% that it constitutes today? A related question from Tracy is, what drove the acceleration in Fuliza transactions value? To you, Dilip.
Dilip Pal: I think it started with Tracy's question, and then I will go to Farouk. Tracy, one of the things that we have spoken about this morning is, what did we do to increase the traction that we are seeing in that segment, especially on the credit side? You have seen that our customers, the active customers who are using, that has gone from 8 million to 17 million, so it is like more than double. I think when we had the Hustler Fund, when we were doing that, one of the things that we realized is that there is a need in the market, and we are not fulfilling. I think none of the operators are fulfilling the needs of the customer in terms of what their great needs are. We thought that the actual market size is smaller.
Dilip Pal: What we have done, we actually, working with our partners, of course, and that is very important because this is not our service, we work with the banks. We have introduced significant improvement in the credit scoring, in the way behavioral credit, risk-based credit, and the limit enhancements, which was not necessarily happening at the pace we were doing it. As you can see, almost like a refresh happened by which more customers got eligible. We used to hear a lot of complaints, and Tracy, if you followed social media, any post of Safaricom will attract a comment saying that, "Why my Fuliza limit is only KES 500? Why that can't be increased to KES 1,000?" There is always, no matter what post you are doing, the customers are feeling that they are not getting the adequate limit they were getting.
Dilip Pal: I think what I wanted to tell you is that through the refresh process, we managed to introduce new variables, which means more and more customers who we thought were not eligible for credit, they are now eligible. Then you have seen that the ticket size has also gone down significantly, which is good. So there is a more velocity in the ecosystem. Customers are taking a small ticket credit, and then they are paying back, and that is why you see that the repayment issue is also quite healthy. I think this probably has been a big learning for us as well. Sometimes we think that the eligible customers are what we think are based on our understanding, but when you test it, that has proven to be quite tracked in the way the numbers are showing up. Another data for you to look at is the volume growth.
Dilip Pal: If you look at the, I think I have given a slide where I have shown the volume growth. The volume growth of 25%. If you look at the volume, that is what drives the velocity for new, I mean, what we call the non-traditional business, which includes financial services as well. That grew 56% year-over-year, which also tells you that there is a lot more traction happening in this space. That is what I will leave with that. There is a lot of learning that we had, and we also realized that the actual eligible base is much more, and we could actually give more credit and put customers who were not getting credit before has also managed to access credit.
Dilip Pal: Farouk, to your question on what should we look at this for future, given that the actual revenue contribution is still small, I think one of our, or we can say that, there is something that we need to be very careful about. We show the revenue, but also what it does is within the ecosystem, the transaction drives a lot more velocity across other streams of revenue as well. It is just not about credit line, because credit line also allows inflow into our ecosystem, and that inflow drives further downstream transactions, which does not necessarily show up in the credit line. And that is why you can see that credit line item is, revenue-wise, it is not big, but it is a very important part of the M-PESA ecosystem.
Dilip Pal: Going back to the past and where you are now, we did a material price correction, giving back value to the customers for credit customers way back, and you have seen we wanted to include more and more customers. So there was a bit of a reset which has happened, almost like 3, 4 years back. Then, I think now with the more customers coming in and the traction that we see, I think, I do not want to say at what level of contribution it will have or what level of growth we have. I think we do not necessarily talk about this in specific business line, but overall M-PESA revenue, one of the things that we mentioned publicly is that medium term, we are confident of growing double digits, and that is what I will continue rather than giving you specific numbers for credit.
Dilip Pal: But we are very satisfied with the progress that we have made in H1 of the year in the financial services business. You saw that wealth management, we are growing more customers. Customers, we have 3.4 million customers that are accessing wealth management. Asset under management now reached KES 25.6 billion. So we feature almost like top 8 asset managers within the country. So these are very important pointers, and each of these need not give you the revenue that you want to, but it does give you the engagement, it does give you the opportunity to retain the customers and therefore bring loyalty. I think that is what M-PESA is. When you call that an ecosystem, everybody is getting benefited out of that ecosystem, and that is how M-PESA we want to the future of M-PESA will be. Thank you.
Caroline Wambugu: Thank you very much, Dilip. Before I allow you to take or to sip a glass of water, just tying back with the last question here from Farouk, still on M-PESA. The question is around the chargeable transactions, the take rates for the chargeable transactions at around 60 bps, that it has been steady. The question being, can this level be maintained for the coming few years? If you can just respond to that before I see we are back to Ethiopia, Dilip.
Dilip Pal: I think our position would be it is fair to expect that to go down. I think we have spoken about it also before, Farouk. As you can see, the traditional and the new business, or non-traditional business as you call them, traditional we are calling, say, consumer payments and the withdrawal. Beyond consumer payments, withdrawal, everything is what we are calling as new business or new growth areas, be it business payments, be it the global payments, or be it financial services. Rate of monetization, I mean, it is there in which you can actually, we have provided those. You can see that the rate of monetization is lower than the traditional. We definitely expect and we always look for opportunities like we did this time in August, to give back value to our customer because we want to make it affordable. We have newer services.
Dilip Pal: We want our customers to use one more services to ensure that they are retained. With that in mind, our view is that, I think expecting stability of a take rate at that level may not be the right assumption. I think you can expect this to go down, but slowly. I am not suggesting that we go down maturing, I think, over the period. That will come through a volume and value, the ecosystem growth, kind of compensate the take rate reduction, and that is what you will see. More and more new growth areas growing faster than the traditional areas, and that will be the normal phenomena.
Caroline Wambugu: Okay. Thank you.
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah.
Caroline Wambugu: Yes.
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah. Caroline, I just wanted to add one or two points on the credit question that Farouk asked. I think probably rather than thinking about how much contribution financial services will make, especially credit, is to understand or to focus on or continue to hold us to account on the drivers of credit and the role that credit plays within the portfolio. As Dilip has said, we primarily had a focus on credit based on largely one product, but also primarily on the consumer side. We see huge acceleration possible on the merchant side. Because merchants are telling us they need credit. We still go through the normal channels to work with banks to make sure those are fulfilled.
Peter Ndegwa: Remember that once we do that, and Dilip explained very well on the micro merchants, then they can also start to use other services that we are providing them. There is still an unmet credit need. When you look at the customer base, we have 40 million active M-PESA customers and about 20 million daily active customers on M-PESA. So 42 million is the monthly one and 20 million daily, but you have 17.7 million credit customers. So you still have some headroom to grow credit on the consumer side. On the merchant side, we have not really dealt with that need. This is why we are very excited about the launch of credit for Pochi. We are already starting to see very good uptake. We do not have the initial numbers because it was only launched a month ago.
Peter Ndegwa: Certainly, we see a real opportunity to accelerate that and to ensure that the credit for Pochi is fulfilled. I think we have tested a lot more, Dilip, on M-PESA, but we intend to change the way we do it. As Dilip said, credit drives payments. You only see that one leg, but the downstream benefits is quite material. Our intention or our mission on credit is credit for all. But credit needs to be affordable. One thing that I think we did right is 3 years ago when we were under a lot of pressure, we reduced the price, as Dilip has said. We halved price. I know there was a lot of pushback, why is revenue on credit not increasing? But now we are starting to see the benefit of that investment that we made.
Peter Ndegwa: The actual growth drivers are still at an early stage for credit, and we believe that we can really work through them over the next couple of years.
Caroline Wambugu: All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Peter and Dilip. Allow us to now cross over to Ethiopia. We will come back to Kenya a little later. Just a question here, and I will request Peter and Wim also to chime in into this one on data and M-PESA pricing. It is a question from Sajid. Sajid is with Harding Loevner. The question is, "Discuss data and M-PESA pricing in Ethiopia, both from regulatory and competitive standpoint." I like this other question, "How do you see M-PESA Ethiopia ARPU trajectory in the medium term?" I think just a comment on pricing in Ethiopia, Peter, and then you can guide if Wim needs to chime in on the same.
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah, I think I would ask Wim to actually handle the question on pricing because we already have a path that the regulator has already outlined, and there was an initial phase that was done around December, January. Wim, please update on where we are on that. Of course, there is a bit of a complication which you can explain in what has happened. As I said at the beginning, we feel that we are behind the curve, or at least the industry is behind the curve on that change curve of the pricing, because we are expecting the second price increase much earlier than we got. Wim, why do not you go ahead, and then I can support you on some of the work we are doing in engaging stakeholders.
Wim Vanhelleputte: Okay. Thanks, Peter. As you have said there, the regulator has defined a long-term floor price that we need to achieve. The timelines to achieving that price has not been set. The price has been set in December last year, but the timelines by which to comply with it has not been clearly defined yet. We had a major one-off increase at the beginning of the year or end of last year, industry-led, so it was not something that we did on our own, but was guided by the regulator as an industry to rationalize our pricing. So far, we have not had a second major industry-led or regulatory-led price increase. There have been elections, a new government has been put in place, so things have been a bit on the slow end, I would say, from May all the way till September, October.
Wim Vanhelleputte: Our engagement continues, of course, with the regulator to have an industry repair. We call it price rationalization and repairing the industry so that investment can continue, so that we have a sustainable long-term business. We are still very confident that in the next 12, 18, 24 months, as I said, we cannot define an exact timeline, but we know the end destination, which is full compliance to that directive. We know it will happen over time, but we do not know how much and how fast. That is still subject to regulatory engagement, stakeholder engagement, so that in the long term, we have a sustainable industry, and you know that mobile data requires investment.
Wim Vanhelleputte: I think there is a full understanding in the industry and with the regulator and other stakeholders that this price rationalization has to happen, not for Safaricom, but for the industry as a whole to be really sustainable for long-term continuous investment in mobile data. Peter, want to add something?
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah. I think that is it, Wim, unless there are further questions. I think the key is for you to be aware that we are actively engaging on this matter. It is an important one that drives long-term success of our industry, and we will continue to update you as we make further progress.
Caroline Wambugu: All right. No, thank you. Thank you very much, Peter and Wim, for that. So bring us back to Kenya, and following on just with our conversations on M-PESA before I touch on other areas. So I do see all your questions. Do not worry, we will get to them. So I see the question from Rohit. Rohit is with Citi, and I will request Dilip, and probably Peter could also maybe chime in into this one on tariff adjustments. I will read out the question. Following the tariff adjustments and increase in free transaction thresholds introduced in August, could you share what changes you have observed in customer behavior, transaction volumes, and overall demand trends? Have the initiatives tracked in line with your expectations this far?
Caroline Wambugu: More broadly, are you seeing any notable differences in growth trends between the consumer and enterprise segments since August, particularly following the pricing and value proposition changes? So maybe Dilip, if you could kick us off on that one. Thank you.
Dilip Pal: I am happy if Peter, you want me to start?
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.
Dilip Pal: Yeah. Okay. I think I did, responding to, I think, one of the question, I was giving an update on what was our intention and what we are trying to do is to ensure that the affordability is at the core of everything that we do. We monetize. Of course, we have a revenue target that we need to achieve, but we also are quite cognizant of the customer affordability and merchant affordability. So this tariff adjustment that was done as part of our campaign called Pata More was both for customer, which is for the Pochi segment, where remember, in case of Pochi, it is the customer who pays the charges. In case of Lipa na M-PESA merchants, it is the merchant who bears the cost, like a credit card charges that merchants bears.
Dilip Pal: For Pochi, as you know, we are scaling our numbers, so obviously we want to ensure that there is that momentum continues. From a volume of transaction or the scale of revenue, these are not necessarily big numbers. Obviously, you can try those things at this level of maturity where it is not a big number, and then it attracts a lot more customers when they start interacting. That increase actually has led to, which leads to what is very difficult to say, but we do see that our Pochi merchant accelerated. The numbers were even better than what we have seen before. Is it in terms of our expectation? To answer to your other question, the answer is yes. It is in line with our expectation. For merchants, similar story.
Dilip Pal: We increased the limit from 200 to 500, which also to ensure that. You know, affordability is at the core of everything, and it is not a surprise that number, if you see that it is there in the presentation, 81% of merchant transactions, be it Pochi or be it the formal merchant Lipa na M-PESA, is actually zero-rated. So obviously, there is a reason why we want that to happen, because then we want the volume to grow. I have also spoken about early days within the plan, but we have seen a growth in the volume in the business segment. I think it is encouraging, and clearly, in terms of our strategy, what we are doing.
Dilip Pal: This is specifically in terms of a customer or merchant, but the other third part, which I also spoke about, is what happens after the money comes to the wallet of the merchant, Lipa na M-PESA merchants. That is where we did the other correction, which is reducing the transaction tariff for merchants to do the downstream transaction. That is like a 50% reduction that we have done to make it affordable. The objective is to ensure that they do not need to move the money out of the merchant wallet. They retain the money, and then can, what we call them, transacting till. They have all, which is done through the business app and the web. They can do pretty much all the transactions they need to do.
Dilip Pal: This is where actually our focus, a lot of solutions that we are building now, specific to a particular segment of the business, particular segment of the merchants, very segment-specific solutions that you will hear us talking about in future. That is what you can almost say that it is kind of run-up to some more solutions that we are doing. But to ensure that we grow our merchant base and we increase our engagement with the merchants, whether merchants as a customer or customer engaging with the merchants.
Caroline Wambugu: Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Dilip. Peter, I do not want to close you out. Did you want to add something on the same before I proceed? Okay. All right. Thank you. In the interest of time, I will move away from M-PESA. I think we have addressed thematically a lot of the M-PESA areas. Unless you have maybe another burning follow-up question on M-PESA, otherwise, I think largely good on that side. Allow me to move into the voice business, Kenya voice business, and I want to combine questions from Baiju. Baiju is with Sayani, and indeed also a question from Rohit on voice. I will read your question, Rohit, where you ask about the resilience of the voice revenue growth, and I will be requesting Dilip if you could respond to this one.
Caroline Wambugu: The question is, "Voice revenue growth remained resilient in the H1 despite the longer-term industry trend towards data-led monetization. What were the key drivers behind the strong voice performance, and do you view the current growth trajectory as sustainable over the medium term?" Baiju, again, was just making reference to the same, and additionally asking, "Is the increased voice usage due to bundling with data and SMS or other factors? Has the bundling led to an increased usage of data? What Safaricom is currently doing to try users increase their data usage?" Just also just acknowledging that voice usage has gone up, so just a good performance on voice. Dilip, over to you.
Dilip Pal: I think there are two parts to it. One is what we have done to stimulate usage, and if Fawzia, if you can talk about it, I think our segment-led, cluster-based, and the personalized offers that we have been running and how we have leveraged our CVM engine, I think that will be helpful because a lot of effort has gone into voice. Before Fawzia comes in, I think I wanted to give you one number, and in one of the sessions this morning I was meeting one of the analysts, I gave him this. I think in the past, when the mobile data scales, the voice comes down. But we have seen that both can grow together, and that's why we build in together, it's called what we call that in together, it's called connectivity business.
Dilip Pal: We have seen usage growth, like our average usage per customer, MOU per customer in 2022 was 165 minutes, and we reported H1 this year, 232 minutes, while our customer base has grown or remained steady. That's very, very, very encouraging. This is in an environment where actually we're reducing prices, and we managed to hold the voice or grew over the years. To your question, I think we'll again, whether it is sustainable, I think I will always talk about our connectivity business as a whole. It is the same wallet where customers pay for voice, customer pays for messaging, customer pays for data, and customer pays for content. Anyway, it's a function of how are you able to their wallet size grows, and therefore how much output they're giving us.
Dilip Pal: I think that's the kind of a long-term view that we have to take into account. Remember, we mentioned about that this is one business where you want to go ahead of higher than inflation. I mean, this is not necessarily either way. I think in the past we said that, when Peter Ndegwa and me, we are on roadshows and calls, we said, "On long term, voice actually is likely to decline." We said that low single digit decline is something that we expected. Obviously, we're not talking about the next six months or next quarter, you're talking about long term. In the long term, it is fair to say that voice revenue will decline. Our objective in the past has been, can we keep it stable, even if it not grow, as long as we can?
Dilip Pal: And that is why this all the CVM offer stimulating growth to the usage that Fawzia has said, huge importance to us. Fawzia, anything that I think you, I mean, the consumer team has done an amazing job in this. I think the H2 of last year and H1 of this year has been incredible story as far as voice is concerned. So Fawzia, maybe you can give some few quick updates in how you have executed voice.
Fawzia Ali: Thank you very much, Dilip, and actually you have put it quite well. If you think about the voice business, the first thing we have to do is provide network. One of the biggest drivers of acceleration is that in the H2 of last year, we, in the H1 of this year, we have actually been able, through the great work of the technology team, to execute all the sites for the year in 6 months. So you can imagine what that has enabled us to do in the H1, and how that will also enable us to optimize and monetize in the H2. So it is allowing many more customers to have great quality of voice, and great access to voice, which actually enables them then to be able to meet with the traffic that we have seen.
Fawzia Ali: Of course, what we have done now is that how we execute voice is, we do not execute it from an overall perspective. We are almost executing it on a site level, so we simply call it a cluster-based execution. We look at each of our clusters. We have divided the country into about 400 and about, thereabout clusters, and we try to see what is the behavior of those sites in those clusters. Do we have an opportunity because there is lower utilization? Do we need to give the customers in that area a better proposition based on their economic situation? And what that means is that we are able to deliver personalized propositions based on the cluster where the customer is. And we have seen this delivering a great impact in terms of uptake from our customers, because you are addressing affordability at a personalized level and meeting the customer need at that level.
Fawzia Ali: Finally, credit. Credit is a huge driver for voice, and of course now data is starting to benefit. So, previously, Okoa, because of how customers used to buy airtime first and then buy the bundle, our emergency credit offer, which we call Okoa Jahazi, really used to fuel a lot of growth. But now, because customers are buying their products through M-PESA, we have been able to open up a Fuliza allowance so that if a customer is trying to buy a bundle and they have a bit of a shortfall, the Fuliza leg completes that leg. So we are seeing a more than double-digit growth in the enablement of Fuliza in completing the journey for most of our voice customers. So these are some of the things that are helping us.
Fawzia Ali: Of course, we are very innovative in trying to help customers to trigger engagement, whether it is a Please Call Me service, enabling sort of like the B party to call a loved one, who probably does not have credit at that time, enabling customers to just be able to make that call when they need it, even if they don't have credit. It is a combination of innovations, network, credit, and execution at what we call cluster almost site level. Thanks.
Caroline Wambugu: Thank you. Thank you very much, Dilip and Fawzia, for those responses. I want to now quickly get into a question here from Sila. Sila, asking a question on the mobile data in Kenya. Sila, on the smartphones and 4G handsets on Safaricom's network, I think that is a number that Dilip spoke to this morning and earlier, but also is on our investor presentations slides. The number is 34 million devices. We call them 4G+. You will see that on the mobile data. But the question, and I will request Dilip to respond to this, is there any update on the device assembly plant in terms of production and its overall impact on smartphone penetration rates this far? Dilip.
Dilip Pal: Sila, from a device, for H1 this year, I think you will see that in the numbers, the actual number of devices that we have sold, and therefore the device revenue that we have booked actually has grown. If I remember correctly, the number is about, I think, grown 40%, 40, 50% year-over-year in terms of device revenue. Now, we are selling more affordable devices, and also we are using our EADAK facility, the device assembly facility, as also to support some of the devices that are being used for the digital health project that you are doing for the country along with other partners. There is a combination of stuff that we are doing.
Dilip Pal: The growth, I would say, you have to look at the growth in the context of the growth did decline because we kind of did a course correction in our strategy to ensure that the objective is to ensure that there is an affordable devices in the hands of all Kenyans, 4G+ devices, and we are making good progress. The means to do it, when nobody was doing it, we started it through the Lipa Mdogo Mdogo program to proposition our own device financing, which we continue to do. But along the way, we also discovered that there are partners that we can leverage. We started working with the partners, and then we actually scaled it, and then we also leveraging through very deliberate way of incentivizing marketing to the open market.
Dilip Pal: That is why you see that actually we are making very good progress when it comes to 4G+ devices attached in our network. 4G+ device attached in our network does not necessarily come only through our own. I mean, we probably are not even 10% of the market, or even less than that. I think that is why the EADAK has potential to do more, and that is what I think EADAK will try and bring in more portfolio of devices which they were not manufacturing before. We were only focusing on one or two models. Now, we are currently in discussion whether we can add more affordable but slightly more expensive devices, so there is a demand for that as well. There are tablets that they are capable of manufacturing, and in future, there are other adjacent accessories or devices they can do, including CPE for our homes and businesses.
Dilip Pal: No, I think that business is okay and doing okay. I think there is no concern. As far as our uptake from the business is concerned, that has also increased this year. But remember, as I told you, that was on the back of a reduction that we have seen in the year. I think we do not just want to use one source of growth as far as device in the hands of the customer. We are leveraging all sources of that, and that is working very well for us.
Caroline Wambugu: Thank you. Thank you very much, Dilip, for that. We are winding down with a few minutes to go to the closure of our call. I will just There are quite a number of questions that are detailed, and we will be able to respond to you on some of those details offline. But thematically, I think I can pick two or three questions as we wind up the session, and I will start with a question from you, John. John, your question is with respect to the satellite, and I will request both Peter and Dilip to chime in into this one. The question is, what are the prospects for the LEO satellite in the two countries? I presume you will seek to partner with any or all networks that are available and resell them or use them for backhaul. What about D2D, direct to device?
Caroline Wambugu: Any CapEx savings to be had? Have you been talking to Chinese constellations as well as SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon, LEO, etc.? Maybe Peter, Dilip, if you could respond to this question on satellite.
Dilip Pal: Peter, please.
Peter Ndegwa: Yeah. Yeah, happy to go. Just before I go, I just wanted to add one point on voice. I do not know, investors, analysts, you have noticed that over time, we have also really corrected the price premium that we had. Also, as MTRs continue to reduce, the actual gap, or the perception around the premium we have, actually has reduced. That perception of good value and ability of Fawzia and the team then to use it to give additional value to customers, especially those who are net receivers, of course, is quite important. You have seen for the H1, the effective price actually reduced by 10%. So these all are affordability and access and actually ubiquitous, or rather democratizing access to our whole portfolio is really important. Now, on satellite, it has been a long haul.
Peter Ndegwa: I think we thought we would have made a lot more progress than we have made so far. But if you recall, of course, Starlink came into this country primarily on broadband, then paused their kind of development of the business because they ran out of capacity, and so on and so forth. But they still sell. If you went to a shop or a supermarket, you would be able to buy. What is unclear, and that is what they are waiting for, is the regulatory or licensing needs that they have for them to fully enable all the offerings that they have in this country. So, I think they will go through that process and conclude it. But on the back of that, we do have the intention to actually work with them on three things.
Peter Ndegwa: Primarily, the backhaul piece, which we are testing, and I think that will be really beneficial, because it actually takes away kind of old technology out of our system, and it is much better for us going forward. Secondly, on the reselling broadband, once the licensing piece is clarified, and if that happens, we will also then be working with what we have been working with across the Vodacom Group. I am sure some of you are familiar with that. Of course, the others, we are also talking to them, and we will partner with whoever is available, because satellite will become a complementary technology for us. It will allow us to offer more for our customers to almost reach, and also reach areas that we were not able to reach before. Of course, for backhaul, it really reduces cost and also allows us to be more efficient.
Peter Ndegwa: On direct-to-device, I think that is probably a bit still a hanging item, both in terms of the quality of what is available, but certainly it is an area that we intend to test with whoever is available and who has the proposition that works, and ensure that when it comes to it, that we have the proposition available. So, this is still an area that is work in progress. I would like to leave it at that, because a lot of it is also related to what the regulator needs to do.
Caroline Wambugu: Thank you, Peter. Dilip, would you like to proceed?
Dilip Pal: On which one you would like me to answer?
Caroline Wambugu: On the satellite, did you want to add anything?
Dilip Pal: No, nothing on satellite. Peter covered it quite well.
Caroline Wambugu: Okay. All right. Okay. All right. I think I will just wrap up with two last questions, and this question I will direct it to you, Dilip, before I bring back Peter with the last question. Rohit of Citi did ask about EBIT guidance. Kenya EBIT guidance appears conservative relative to the H1 run rate and the strong underlying performance. Are there any specific cost headwinds or revenue risks that you expect to materialize in the H2? Dilip, if you could respond to that one.
Dilip Pal: It is an interesting question, Rohit, because when we were guiding for the year in May, there was this concern given what is going on, especially in the Middle East, Iran, that time, that how confident are you about delivering the guidance that we have provided? It was felt that it was quite optimistic, and we said that, yes, there are a few variables, but most important variable was the energy cost of inflation-led cost growth, to what extent it happens, because there is so much of uncertainty. Then we actually mentioned during the call saying that as we come to November, during our half-year results release, we would have by now evaluated what is the kind of expenses which has happened and how much we could have absorbed.
Dilip Pal: In my results presentation, I have spoken about our energy cost actually grown by 22%, which is a material increase, but we could absorb that within our overall envelope of cost that we manage. We know what kind of uncertainties, because we are also doing a lot of work in terms of managing our actual fuel consumption due to our use of AI. Peter's presentation slides, he spoke about that we are bringing in more efficiency. Actual cost growth would have been much higher if we had not managed our cost well. I think that gave us the confidence that the numbers that I think we are confident of delivering our guidance. I think for us, this is a pit stop to be able to see, yes, Kenya is doing well, Ethiopia is on its track.
Dilip Pal: I mean, from the numbers, you can see that you are pretty much within the guidance. That is why Peter has reconfirmed the guidance. I will not say that it is conservative or it is optimistic. I think this is our assessment in the H1 pit stop that we believe that should be able to deliver our EBIT guidance that we have given for the full year. I will leave it there, Caroline.
Caroline Wambugu: All right. No, thank you. Thank you very much, Dilip. That brings us almost to our close of the session. As I mentioned earlier, I will take one last question from Nancy on the Vodacom deal, so that we can respond to that, even as I request Peter to share his closing remarks post responding to this question, and then release us for the day. As I mentioned earlier, we have taken note of the other detailed questions, which we shall endeavor to respond to. Just take note of that, and you can always do your usual follow-up with us. Peter, the question from Nancy reads, "Potential cancellation of the Vodacom deal. What would be the potential implications of canceling the deal from an operational and governance perspective, and how might this ultimately affect Safaricom's overall business performance?" Peter.
Peter Ndegwa: Nancy. Caroline, you are very strategic. You left the most difficult question to at the end. Actually, to be fair, it is not a difficult question. The way that I would answer that question is, we have always messaged that the Vodacom and the GoK deal, which is just simply GoK selling 15% Vodacom, is a shareholder matter. There is a court case that had been going on, and it has not started now. There was a legal process that had been undertaken. It is a material deal. It is a highly public deal in this country. So it is likely to receive the scrutiny. So it is not surprising that the courts and everyone have actually been involved. As you know, that the matter has now gone or been referred to the Court of Appeal, and the process is public knowledge, and the appeal process will run its course.
Peter Ndegwa: We take the view that this is a shareholder matter, and the legal process needs to be allowed to take its course. Frankly, as a company, we do not express a view as to what is the likelihood or not of success or not. Therefore, if it does not, what happens? That is a matter for the shareholders. Should that happen, remember that these two shareholders who are existing shareholders of Safaricom, they are not new. So I would leave it at that, and I would say the matter is in court, and we should allow it to run its course. Caroline, you have told me to summarize or to close. Before I close, I thought that I should mention that, as you have seen, I invited the ex-co members of the team that reports to me. We have two new people, or relatively new.
Peter Ndegwa: One is very new because it was announced yesterday, but the other one is relatively new because they came in a few months ago. Not sure whether they caught the full-year review by investors. Amgad, who comes from Vodafone Egypt, has joined us as enterprise head. As you know, we want to really make progress on the enterprise side, and Amgad has great experience in a slightly more mature market compared to Kenya on the enterprise side, and he is already making good progress, and we have seen some of the results actually benefit in our H1. To go beyond connectivity. Then, of course, Boniface, who we announced as the Chief Financial Services Officer. Boniface is not new to M-PESA. He has been acting and also has been involved in M-PESA for a very long time, and then detoured into public sector work, which has been quite successful.
Peter Ndegwa: Boniface is leading this business, and we announced this formally yesterday after receiving CBK approval. I want to welcome both Boniface and Amgad, and also say that should you require any deep dives into those 2 areas, I am very happy for the investor relations team, led by Caroline Wambugu, to arrange. In terms of conclusion, I think the day has been good and very well received here. We are very pleased, and actually the board and also all of us are very pleased with the results that we have announced. Kenya has continued. This is the fourth year where we are delivering on our double-digit growth, and it is across the board. Actually, the quality of earnings, the quality of growth, and the shape of P&L is very strong, and also it is broad-based, which is fantastic.
Peter Ndegwa: Then, of course, on the M-PESA side, which continues to evolve, we continue to leverage on our investment, especially in Fintech 2.0 to grow. We have done a lot of revamp on the structure that actually supports our ability to offer solutions, not just products going forward. We are very pleased with Ethiopia, with the progress that Wim and team are making in Ethiopia, and especially the path to EBITDA break-even. In particular, now we are in that stage. I remember 3 years ago, when we had the investor forum in Ethiopia, we said that scale in Ethiopia is 15 to 20 million customers. We have crossed that 15 million mark, and it is closer to 4,000 sites, which we are almost there.
Peter Ndegwa: We feel that we are in a good place, and we are seeing Ethiopia now starting to make material impact, both to top and also to bottom line, especially as losses reduce. Then finally, on the purpose side and the sustainability side, we continue to be seen as a brand that goes beyond delivering on its commercial objectives. We launched our 15th sustainability report, and that has really landed well. We create value well beyond all the profits, about 13 times the profits that we actually make in this country, which is fantastic. On the foundation side, we have now large-scale programs like Citizens of the Future, which focuses on education. We are pleased with the H1, but we remain humble because we are still at halftime. For those who follow soccer, anything could change in the second half.
Peter Ndegwa: But at least for you, we are confirming our guidance. That is why I like the fact that Caroline deferred guidance question to Dilip, and another one to myself. We are confirming our guidance, and looking forward to a fantastic year and to continuing to engage you. Thank you for attending the session, and have a very good evening or good afternoon. Thank you very much.
Caroline Wambugu: Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter Ndegwa, Dilip Pal, and Wim. Thank you to the rest of us for engaging us on the call. Look out for the various engagement platforms. As Peter Ndegwa has mentioned, we will be engaging with you in more detail on this particular set of results. Just to remind us, there is the investor forum coming up in February. So if you have not registered, please also make a point of registering for that on 25 and 26 February, so that we can engage together in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. So look out for that as well. Otherwise, from us, have yourselves a good day and good evening. Thank you.
Dilip Pal: Thanks, everyone.
Amgad Nafie: Thank you.
Boniface Mungania: Thank you.
