Safaricom Dividend Announcement Excites NSE Investors

Safaricom stocks rallied at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) on Friday, February 25 following the telco’s declaration of an interim dividend to be paid out in March 2022.

After closing the previous day at Ksh34.55, Safaricom was up 4.20% on February 25 and was trading at Ksh36.0 in the afternoon following the Safaricom announcement.

The Safaricom board approved the payment of an interim dividend of Ksh0.64 per ordinary share held amounting to Ksh25.64 Billion, for the year ending March 31, 2022. The interim dividend will be payable to shareholders on the Registrar of Members as at the close of business on March 17, 2022.

The dividend will be paid on or about March 31, 2022. It represents a 42.44% increase on last year’s interim dividend of Ksh0.45 per share equivalent to Ksh18 billion.

Safaricom’s major shareholders will be among the big beneficiaries of the dividend – among them the National Treasury which expects an 8.9 billion shilling cheque owing to its 35% stake.

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Vodacom Group Limited and Vodafone Group Plc will receive a combined Ksh10.2 billion thanks to their 40% stake in Safaricom.

The telco is expected to release its latest full year results in March. In its half year results to September 2021, Safaricom saw net profit rise 12.1% to Ksh37.05 billion.

Growth was primarily driven by the M-Pesa mobile money service.

The value of transactions on M-Pesa rose 51.5 per cent to Ksh13.7 trillion in the six months to September 2021 – about 13 per cent of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020. The figure will certainly be higher at the end of Safaricom’s reporting period in March 2022.

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