Spotlight on M-Pesa as Safaricom Releases Half-Year Financial Results

 Investors will be keenly watching Safaricom financial results for the first six months of the 2020/21 period being released today morning.

With its dominant position at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) and a market capitalization of close to Ksh1.3 trillion, Safaricom is one of the prime movers at the bourse, dominated by foreign investors.

Analysts have projected that Safaricom’s business will be hugely impacted by measures pushed by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) to cushion low-income households from negative effects of COVID-19.

The waiver on transaction fees on mobile cash transfers for amounts less than Ksh1,000 has robbed Safaricom of revenues from its flagship M-Pesa cash transfer platform.

Safaricom emerged the second most active counter, at the end of Friday last week, moving 41.8 million shares valued at Ksh 1.3 billion. This accounted for 41.60% of the week’s total traded value. The share price of Safaricom was up 1.46% to close last week at KSh31.30.

Safaricom, KCB and Equity were the prime movers last week, pushing up the Nairobi bourse valuation by 0.92% to KSh 2.17 Trillion by the close of trading on Friday last week. This is against the previous week’s market cap of KSh 2.15 trillion.

 KCB declined 1.25% to close last week at KSh35.60 from KSh36.05 registered the previous week. KCB moved shares valued at KSh891 million.

Equity Group edged up 3.24% to close the week at KSh35.00 with 11 million shares valued at KSh386 million traded.

The NSE All share index (NASI) was up 1.28 points to end last week at 141.32 points. This represented a 4-week gain of 1.22%, but an overall year-to-date decline in performance of 15.08%.

The NSE 20 share index declined 14.14 points to 1,769.54 points, while NSE 25 share index was up 29.54 points or 0.93% from the previous week’s close to settle at 3,200.41.

 The NSE 20 and the NSE25 share indices have shed up-to 33.34% and 21.95% respectively in year-to-date performance.