Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the financial results announcement for Safaricom PLC for the year 2023/2024. On behalf of our board of directors, the management team, and the Safaricom staff, we thank you very much for joining us in person and virtually for this event. My name is Caroline Wambugu. I serve as the Head of Financial Planning Analysis and Investor Relations here at Safaricom. I will be your moderator for the day. Speaking of technology, allow me to introduce my co-moderator for this morning's announcement, Zuri.
Thank you, Caroline, and good morning to everyone following us online or with us live here at the Michael Joseph Center. I'm glad to be co-moderating this session alongside you today. Before we kick off, as Safaricom Smart Assistant, it is so exciting to see the AI-inspired Chapa Dimba TTC play, especially ahead of this weekend's Rift finals happening in Nakuru. The competition is truly hotting up this season. Back to you, Caroline. [Foreign language].
Thank you, Zuri. Thank you, Zuri, for warming up the room. It's always a pleasure to moderate with you. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to outline the agenda for this morning. We will start with remarks by Peter Ndegwa, our Chief Executive Officer, who will give a business overview delving into our purpose and strategy. Our Chief Finance Officer, Dilip Pal, will then take us through the financial performance results for the period under review. Following this, our Chairman, Adil Khawaja, will give his closing remarks.
Thereafter, we will have a question and answer session for those in the room and the rest following us online. For those following us online, share your questions with us through the Menti platform, so www.menti.com, and use the code that is displayed right now on your screen. The code, I'll read it out to you as well. It's 577-636-82. Also for your comfort, you can just scan the QR code, and it will still take you to the same platform. Zuri, would you kindly guide the audience on how we can engage with us throughout the day?
Gladly, Caroline. Should you like to keep your social media followers updated, our hashtag today is #SafaricomHYResults. For those in the room, we have free Wi-Fi provided for you within the Michael Joseph Center to facilitate this. The Wi-Fi username is mgeni and has no password. Simply agree to the terms and conditions to enjoy the brilliant connectivity that Safaricom offers. In staying committed to our promise of diversity and inclusion, our sign language interpreter today is Susan Kadenyi Ubaga.
Before I hand back to you, Caroline, as you know, I am the voice of virtual care at Safaricom, and in this role, it is my job to put a smile on our customers' faces. And because sharing is caring, allow me to share my compliments with Bella Genga of Reuters. Beautiful pink blouse. Baiju Shah of Apollo Asset Management, I see you there in a blue suit. Almost as lovely as today's performance announcement. Back to you, Caroline.
Thank you very much, Zuri. I can tell you're putting smiles on our faces this morning, so thank you for doing your job so, so well.
Thank you.
Allow me to now welcome our Chief Executive Officer, Peter Ndegwa, to make his presentation. By the way, Zuri, you haven't made any comments on him.
I was saving the best for last. Look at that red tie. Welcome back, Peter. Looking dapper this morning.
Indeed, putting smiles on our faces. I was going to comment that Zuri was not complimenting me, or Dilip, especially Dilip. So thank you, Caroline, and thank you, Zuri, for those remarks. So I'll start. Fellow shareholders, representatives of the investor community, the chairman, the board and management, and staff of Safaricom Group, members of the media and the online community, good morning. Good morning, those in the room.
Good morning.
That's better. So, just before I start, I thought I should say it's great to see Chapa Dimba really doing well. I know there's a final this weekend, the Rift Valley final, gaining momentum, and it's our biggest investment in sports this year. So it's great to see us going back to football. So it gives me great pleasure to present our half-year financial results for the period ended September 30th 2023. Before I start, I would like to acknowledge the presence of Safaricom board members, both the Safaricom PLC board members, but also the Safaricom Ethiopia board members, those present in the room, but also those who are calling online. Let us start by looking at the environment we operated under.
During this period, there was an accelerated pressure on the consumer wallet. This was largely driven by challenging global and local macroeconomic factors affecting inflation and exerting pressure on consumer wallet and spend. As a result, businesses have also been under pressure, having to deal with rising energy and foreign exchange costs, while balancing between operating an efficient business and also cushioning customers at a tough time. Let me turn now onto our purpose and how we have partnered for a sustainable future. Our commitment to the society remains at the core of our operations. This is evidenced by the sustainable linked loan that we recently announced. The KES 15 billion loan is the first of its kind and the largest ESG-linked debt facility undertaken in the East African region.
This funding will unlock our ability to create a more diversified investment profile. It will also support our investment in innovative technology and allow us to manage our ESG footprint. Let me now see how we have supported our communities. Through our two foundations, both the Safaricom and M-PESA Foundation, we build a footprint across the country, benefiting millions of Kenyans. We are transforming lives, as evidenced by our community investment in healthcare, in education, and in economic empowerment. During this period, Safaricom Foundation turned 20, whilst the M-PESA Foundation, which has been in existence for 13 years, continues to provide long-lasting, transformative impact through large-scale projects. Ladies and gentlemen, let us now look at our strategy and execution. We are in our penultimate year of our vision of being a purpose-led technology company.
As you'll see shortly, we are cementing ourselves deeply into the tech space through our tech-led initiatives. We are now in the process of crafting our next phase, which is our 2030 strategy, which will identify our next phase of growth. The results that you'll see shortly represents the strong performance in Kenya and commercial momentum in Ethiopia. This performance is attributed to great execution of our strategy. Some of the key highlights in Kenya, including the launch of a youth platform, Safaricom Hook, and also accelerated rollout of 5G. In Ethiopia, the introduction of mobile financial services and mobile data contributed to this momentum. Together with M-PESA Africa, we partnered with Sumitomo Corporation to launch the Spark Accelerator that aims to support early-stage startup to grow and scale their businesses.
To support tech ambitions, we are building a world-class digital talent. During this period, we held the Safaricom Engineering Summit, dubbed Decode. We showcased our digital talent and fostered partnerships within industry. Together with local mobile network operators and international device manufacturers, we recently launched the first of its kind device assembly plant in Kenya. Our aim as Safaricom is to connect over 20 million customers with 4G-enabled devices by 2025. We also seek to support Kenya's digital agenda, as well as serve regional export needs. We believe that a smartphone in every person's hand will act as a pathway to accessing endless possibilities on the internet and essential services by governments. This plant will aid us in bridging the digital divide, spurring economic growth, and fostering innovation. Let us now double-click on some of the performance indicators.
In Kenya, we continued creating enhanced value for our customers in a tough economic environment. We've added value to our customers by offering bundled propositions that are individualized to the customer's usage and habits. Some of these offerings include Tunukiwa, Gomoka, and others. We have accelerated 4G development from both network and handset success, and are driving innovation that benefits the customers. We've also invested in relevant partnerships to drive more usage and penetration.... From financial services perspective, we continue to scale consumer solutions through our payments, wealth solutions launched during this period. Through our payments and wealth solutions launched during this period. This is part of our commitment to improve financial health, while delivering value to our customers by ensuring the solutions are customized and relevant for them.
On the MSMEs, we've accelerated the use of Pochi La Biashara . We've also seen an increase in the number of merchants using this service. We continue providing business tools and connecting merchants to opportunities. We've worked very hard to scale tech, to scale technology solutions for the benefit of Kenyans accessing government services. We are supporting Kenya in digitizing and enabling access of government services through the use of technology. This include, but not limited, to simplified access to affordable credit, as well as services in critical sectors such as health and agriculture, provided by both county and national government. We continue to onboard more services with the aim of supporting Mwananchi access all services digitally. We are committed to being a trusted partner of choice for enterprise, especially MSMEs.
We are driving growth for enterprises by offering innovative, connected technology solutions, such as cybersecurity, cloud services, Internet of Things, among others, that create efficiencies for these businesses. Now, turning to our attention to Ethiopia. Let me start by introducing Wim Vanhelleputte, our Safaricom Ethiopia CEO, who I would like to ask to stand and wave to the team here at Michael Joseph Center. Thank you very much for welcoming Wim. Wim is attending his first investor briefing since joining us just two months ago. I thought it was longer than that, Wim. Despite the challenges posed by hyperinflation, macroeconomic factors, and an evolving political landscape, we are encouraged by the progress that we are making at a national level.
Like many other economies in emerging and, in emerging and frontier markets, the economy in Ethiopia remains promising with significant business opportunities. Although inflation is high, we note the downward trend with the lowest levels recorded since 2021. We take cognizance of the return to normalcy and the return of economic activities in the Tigray region, giving us an opportunity to accelerate our network and commercial rollout. Looking at M-PESA in Ethiopia. Since switching on M-PESA in mid-August, we've registered just over 1.2 million customers. With only 35% of the country being financially included, our strategic vision remains to deepen financial inclusion and promote a cash-light economy.
M-PESA strategy revolves around five key pillars: establishing a widespread agent and merchant ecosystem, delivering a superior customer experience, enabling digital payments and integrated solutions, supporting e-commerce and remittances, and finally, offering digital financial services. Ladies and gentlemen, some of Ethiopia's performance highlights. It's now one year since we launched commercial services. We made fair progress and gained good commercial momentum since then. This momentum is largely driven by mobile data and M-PESA, though coming off a small base. We are particularly encouraged by the usage levels in mobile data. Such levels have only been realized in Kenya after 10 years of operation. In September, Ethiopia data usage was higher than that of Kenya, having closed at 4.3Gb per customer, compared to 3.7 for Kenya.
On network, we have rolled out just over 2,000 sites as at the end of September 30th. This is equivalent to about a third of the network that we have in Kenya. Ethiopia is full of opportunities. For us to achieve the impact we expect, we must reach as many Ethiopians as possible through network expansion, customer acquisition, and relevant propositions. Indeed, we've accelerated our distribution and partnership model to ensure access and reach across the country. We are very pleased with the optimism that the internet has evoked in a youthful population of Ethiopia, as evidenced by the mobile data usage levels. We've also been very deliberate in ensuring that the customer experience, including the onboarding journey and how our services are offered.... Let me now have a look at the performance for this half, which is ending, which ended September 30th 2023.
Our group service revenue recorded a very impressive double-digit at 10%. This was driven by a strong Kenya service revenue, which grew 8.5% year-on-year, and Ethiopia commercial momentum, getting it to 10%. Ethiopia commercial momentum based on customer acquisition and M-PESA switch-on. This confirms what we've been saying, that Ethiopia, from now on, will start being accretive to the group results. We've hit double-digit growth for both Kenya, Kenya's business, earning before interest and taxes and net income, which closed on 14.9% and 10.9% respectively. Our group net income, excluding minority interests, grew 2.1%, to KES 34.2 billion , which is encouraging. At this moment, I'll now invite our CFO, Dilip, to take us through the performance in greater detail. Dilip, if you can join.
Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
[Foreign language]. I'm delighted to present our financial performance for the first half of the financial year, ending on September 30th 2023. As Peter mentioned, we have delivered excellent results, and I'll spend the next half an hour or so providing you with an overview of our accomplishments. Before we begin, I would like you to let you know that all the detailed results material will be available and accessible on our website immediately after this session. Now, let's dive into the numbers. So during the first half of the year, we have achieved strong results, demonstrating resilience in the face of challenging macroeconomic environment. We navigated through economic headwinds, including high inflation, rising energy cost, weakening Kenyan shilling, and also high interest rates. This, of course, impacted our financial performance. This period has also seen some notable developments, building on events from the previous fiscal year.
You would recall mobile termination rate, which was implemented, which changed from KES 0.99 to KES 0.58 from August 1, 2022, have now completed a full cycle, resulting in a negative impact over a four-month period from April to July of this financial year. The reintroduction of charges for M-PESA transactions to and from banks, initiated on January 1, 2023, has improved our M-PESA performance during the first half, and that you will get to see now. Driven by our effective execution of business strategies, we have delivered exceptional results in Kenya. An impressive year-on-year service revenue growth of 8.5%, which becomes 9.3% when adjusted for the MTR impact. Robust double-digit growth in EBITDA at 13%, EBIT at 14.9%, and net income at 10.9%.
At the group level, including our Ethiopia operations, at a consolidated level, we have achieved double-digit service revenue growth, as Peter has mentioned. I will delve into Safaricom's performance in Ethiopia later. In the past five years, our service revenue has its share of ups and downs, largely due to disruption caused by COVID-19 pandemic, and also introduction of free M-PESA-related services transactions to support the tough economic conditions for our customers. However, if you look at the chart on the left, we can see that things are returning to a pre-COVID level. This is despite the fact that we have optimized our pricing. Our rate per megabits has reduced by 65% since H1 of 2020, and our voice rates are down by 44% in the same period.
While this was towards making our products affordable, but this was also to ensure that we reduce our price premium over the competitors. We have reintroduced fees for M-PESA transactions, although we have kept the rates lower to see that our customers are not burdened. For example, we reduced M-PESA tariffs by approximately 61%. The eight point five percent year-on-year growth in service revenue can be primarily attributed to the growth in M-PESA, mobile data, and fixed data revenues. If we exclude the four-month negative impact of Kenyan shilling, KES 1.1 billion for MTR, our service revenue, as I said, would have shown a growth of 9.3%. We'll provide a more detailed explanation of the specific revenue lines in the upcoming slides. Moving across the charts on the right, that shows our service revenue profile.
M-PESA now accounts for 42.1% of our service revenue, up from 39% last year. Now, let's focus on M-PESA. It's a crucial part of our business and has played a major role in our growth. M-PESA revenue achieved an exceptional 16.5% year-on-year growth. This growth was delivered by a few key factors. Starting with personal payments, this category basically includes transfers and withdrawals, and makes up almost 65% of M-PESA revenue, grew by 13.5% year-on-year. Business-related payments, such as pay, paying bills, purchases from merchants increased significantly by 40.2%. This growth was mainly due to reintroduction of charge from wallet to bank and bank to wallet, and also more merchants using Lipa M-PESA services. The number of merchants in this period grew by 22.3% to 658,000.
Global payments represents a smaller portion of the M-PESA revenue, which is about 2%, grew by 9.5% year-on-year. This was possible because more people are sending money internationally, and we expanded our international payment corridors to 200 markets. On the other hand, financial services category saw a 19% dip year-on-year, primarily due to price optimization of our Fuliza product. If you exclude Fuliza, our financial services revenue grew double-digit. Although even for Fuliza, the value of disbursements went up by 33% and ended at KES 419 billion for the half year 2024. Now, of course, this is possible because we made Fuliza affordable and also fit for solution to the market. Fuliza customers grew and reached to 7.5 million as at end of September 2023. Now, let's dive into usage of M-PESA.
It is very important to look at the velocity in the ecosystem. The ecosystem continued to expand with the total value and the volumes of M-PESA transactions growing by 1.1% and 34.7% year-over-year, reaching KES 18.3 trillion and 12.9 billion transactions, respectively. So value increased to KES 18.3 trillion, and volumes grew to 12.9 billion transactions. Of the KES 18.3 trillion in transactions, KES 10.1 trillion was chargeable, which is 55.4%, reflecting a 64.3% year-over-year growth. It is important to note that, as expected, we we registered a drop in the transactions value to bank and from bank by about 29%, valued at KES 1.1 trillion.
This drop is not significant, given that this ecosystem, you would recall during the COVID period in the last three years, has actually grown by 140%. The bottom right chart shows that the total of 12.9 billion transactions in the period, 5.6 billion or 43.1% were chargeable and grew by 45.4%. The left chart shows that the chargeable transactions, which is a very important parameter for monetization and the revenue growth for M-PESA services, chargeable transactions per one month, per customer, per one month active customers grew from 22 to 29, which is a growth of 29% year-over-year. It's not too long ago, pre-COVID, our app, our average transactions per customer per month was anything between 10 to 12. It's almost like 3x in the last three years.
We continue to invest and drive innovation of new products as we increase our service offering to customers. Still continuing on M-PESA, our journey to digitize payment platforms and embrace technological innovation is on track. Our M-PESA apps play a very, very significant role in digitizing and transition to support consumer lifestyles and business transactions. The consumer app goes beyond transactions, offering 76 mini apps for added convenience and e-commerce. It's gaining momentum with 8.5 million downloads, 3.4 million active users, with 1.6 million revenue generating customers every month. KES 5.2 billion revenue from apps, 936 million transactions, totaling KES 897 billion in value.
An impressive 96.2 transactions per one month active customers, compared to what I talked about, 29 transactions per customer per month on an average in M-PESA ecosystem. The Business Super App is also gaining momentum, featuring 1.3 million downloads and over 142,000 active merchants, generating KES 333.5 million in revenue and facilitating over 28.9 million transactions, valued at KES 143.4 billion. Please note that more detailed information on M-PESA's performance, you can refer to the results booklet, which will be available on our website shortly. Now, let's shift our focus to mobile data, a crucial growth area for us. Mobile data also performed exceptionally well, with a double-digit growth of 12.5%, fueled by increased usage.
As Peter mentioned earlier, the widespread adoption of smartphones is a cornerstone in propelling this growth by providing an enhanced customer experience and driving usage. We are pleased to report that the number of smartphone users has grown 11.4% year-over-year, reaching 21.4 million. Of these users, 67% utilize 4G devices, which has also grown 19% year-over-year, and 510,000 users use 5G devices. The average usage per chargeable data subscribers grew by 11.7% year-over-year, reaching 3.8 Gb per customer per month. 9.2 million customers now use more than 1 Gb per month, marking an 8.7% year-over-year growth.
Data ARPU was stable, driven by a 16.6% growth in chargeable customers, which has now crossed 20 million marks, reaching 21.4 million customers at the end of September. Our rate per Mb has decreased by 9.8% year-on-year to KES 0.062 . Just for your information, on a half-year basis, this is the slowest decline in rate per Mb we have ever witnessed, ever since we launched mobile data, making data more affordable for our customers. Our customer value management initiatives and big data analytics have significantly improved our ability to provide targeted offerings to our customers. We continue to support customers in acquiring 4G devices through our affordable Lipa Mdogo Mdogo proposition, which has now crossed 1 million mark.
With the launch of 4G smartphone local device assembly, we anticipate a significant boost in smartphone penetration across the country. These developments, ladies and gentlemen, signify our commitment to enhancing customer experience and fostering a greater connectivity in the digital age. Now, let's explore our fixed services, another essential growth sector. Our fixed business revenue has shown a year-on-year growth of 9.1%. When we adjust for certain one-offs from the previous period, the underlying growth is a growth of impressive 14% year-on-year. Fiber to Home saw a significant growth of 29% year-over-year. The chart on the top right indicates that active Fiber to Home customers grew from 173,000 last year to 223,000 this year. The chart at the bottom right provides insight into our fixed enterprise business.
While there was a marginal increase in the number of customers, we acknowledge that there is still significant growth potential in this sector. As I mentioned, there is a one-off last year, and if we normalize the one-off, the enterprise segment also grew by 8.7%. We recognize the vast opportunities for expansion of fixed and have already embarked on various initiatives, including IoT and ICT, as Peter mentioned earlier. These advancements highlight our commitment to enhancing our fixed service offerings, expanding our customer base, and venturing into promising technological domains. Moving on to voice and messaging revenue, I would like to highlight our strategic efforts to support our customers during these challenging macroeconomic conditions. We have consistently optimized our pricing to ensure that our customers can enjoy the most value at competitive price points. This approach has been our long-term commitment.
To deliver our promise of value, we have engaged our customers through various campaigns and provided integrated bundled propositions. During this period, our blended rates decreased by 14.6% year-on-year to KES 1.28 per minute. Our messaging rate remains stable compared to the previous half. We observed a 21.6% year-on-year increase in voice usage. Very, very commendable in a situation where voice usage is going down generally, but we managed to grow voice usage by 21.6% year-on-year to 184.3 minutes. And if you look back historically, you will see that barring one or two half, we grew our voice minutes every single half year. Messaging revenue saw a growth of 6%, which again, we reversed the trend from a decline from a couple of years back.
This is driven by integrated bundled propositions that we are offering to our customers. Looking ahead, it is possible that these two revenue lines may follow a pattern similar to what happens in the mature market. Nonetheless, our strategy is to focus to ensure that we keep our market share, which is stable at currently at 66%. Our customer-centric approach, pricing, and value propositions remains unwavering, even in the face of evolving market dynamics. Looking at new growth areas, we have continued to focus on accelerating new growth areas to complement the core.... We have witnessed increased momentum with impressive growth trajectories. The M-PESA new growth areas, which include the Pochi la Biashara, business transacting tools, and the merchant credit facilities, recorded a growth of 54% year-over-year, reaching the KES 1 billion mark in revenue.
Content revenue more than doubled in the period, recording KES 700 million revenue, mainly coming from video streaming services, our base platform, gaming subscriptions, and educational content. Our IoT business, which majorly serves the enterprise clients, also grew the revenue by 26%. You see a decline in cloud and hosting, but as I mentioned, there was one of, in the last, last financial year, if you normalize that, actually, cloud and hosting also grew by 26.7%. We are dedicated to being a trusted partner for our customers, a one-stop shop in serving our SMEs, MSMEs, and large corporate segments of the economy, offering them comprehensive solutions to meet their diverse needs. Now, let me give some highlights on our costs, especially noting the macro effects that I spoke about and Peter spoke about.
As per the graph shown on the left, our costs grew by 8.7% year-over-year, mainly driven by increased network operating costs, lease costs, and foreign exchange losses. The network operating cost was mainly driven by rising fuel and energy rates, and if you exclude the impact of energy cost, our operating cost would have grown by only 1.4%, which is much below inflation. Net foreign exchange losses reflect the 22% depreciation of shilling, Peter spoke about. The graph on the left shows that our direct costs declined 11.5%, driven by decreased handset sales due to higher taxes imposed in the financial year 2022. Excluding handset sales, our direct costs dropped by 1.8%, driven by efficiencies targeted at mitigating the rising operational costs.
We continue to look for opportunities to create efficiencies through sustainable initiatives that will lock in value into the future and cushion external micro impacts of the business. Now, moving to the balance sheet, a bit on the debt and the finance cost. We have seen our finance cost increasing due to rising interest rates. The table on the left gives you a good view of our debt position. We closed debt position at KES 89.8 billion, and our net debt position was KES 74.9 billion. We have taken measures to reduce our foreign currency exposure due to the depreciating currency by reducing our foreign currency exposure. You will recall that in FY 2022, we took a $400 million facility, bridge facility, to finance our Ethiopia license investment.
In FY 2023, 30% of that was converted to a local dollar facility, about $120 million, and I'm happy to note that we managed to pay off the entire dollar-denominated loan, which is actually helping us to reduce our exposure in foreign currency. We, however, must deal with the challenge of managing the rising interest rates, which has led to an increase of 48.5% in our finance cost. We have already started taking some deliberate steps on this with the recent sustainability-linked loan of KES 15 billion. The rates for this loan will be linked to our sustainability targets and will be, therefore, below market rates. Now, looking at the key KPIs, just to reiterate that Safaricom's Kenya's key performance indicators remain very strong and have been stable over the years.
Our innovations and customer propositions are supporting the top line in delivering increased revenues. Our productivity initiatives have helped us to cushion the growth on the cost side to deliver improved margins across all KPIs. Our EBITDA and EBIT margins at 55.9% and 41.5% respectively, recording marked improvement year-over-year. These are the best margins we have ever recorded. Our OpEx intensity is one of the best in the industry, at 16.8%, which demonstrates our focus on productivity is paying off. Our return on capital employed stands at 55.3%, giving us good headroom to support our investment activities. Now, let's switch gear to Ethiopia. Peter spoke about a lot in terms of our commercial execution and our site rollout.
It's been a year since we launched Ethiopia, and we are encouraged by the momentum recorded in H1 2024, confirming the great potential that we see in this market. With the increased sites and coverage now published coverage to 30%, our customer acquisitions have continued to grow and consequently, usage and revenue. As you can see from the chart, pretty much all KPIs are on upward trend. Ninety-day active customers, thirty-day active customers, they are all doubling. So we closed our ninety-day active customers to 4.1 million and 30-day active customers to 2.6 million. We have recorded excellent usage on data, as Peter mentioned. Since September, we are better than Kenya, and overall, we recorded 3.1 GB per customer per month.
Voice is still low at 63.8 minutes, and it is not unusual to have voice, lower voice minutes, simply because we still don't have the scale of customers that we need to enable that network effect. As Peter mentioned, we also launched M-PESA in August, which had recorded 1.2 million registered customers. We shall give a firmer update about M-PESA during the Q3 update, as we do normally a quarterly update for Ethiopia in January, and how this segment is faring, since it's still very early days. Now, looking at the revenue and ARPUs, the key highlight here is that we are a data network, and 69% of service revenue is coming from data. And data ARPU is also quite good at KES 180 per customer per month.
Just to remind you all that we are not far off from Kenya as far as data ARPU is concerned. So what is required is more customers coming in, and then we are able to increase the voice usage, which will enable us to grow our ARPU. And I remember this conversation when we did this in half year or full year last year, that ARPU is low. Yes, we said that ARPU is gonna be low, starting with, and then over a period of time, it grows. And remember, M-PESA has not yet finally taken off in the scale that we need. And just to remind all of you that these numbers are consolidated in the overall group performance, inclusive of the hyperinflationary adjustment. So just to reiterate again, Ethiopia is still under hyperinflation environment, and I'll talk about that later.
Now, coming to our funding and the medium-term outlook, we continue to explore and assess optimal funding for the business. I can confirm your business is well-funded and with a combination of equity, deferred vendor payments, and our DFIs contributing, and also commercial banks from local side, is helping us to take care of the funding needs. As we have previously updated, IFC is now an equity partner in the GPE consortium, which are with our other consortium partners, with a 7.25% shareholding. And having concluded the discussion in Q1, and they have made their first equity payment tranche in August, in this financial year. Their entry, of course, diluted shareholding of the other consortium members, with Safaricom PLC now holding 51.67%, down from 55.1%.
We are still majority shareholder, and we're still able to consolidate numbers in the group in Kenya. The new ownership percentage have been applied in the calculation of minority interest at the consolidated level, effective this financial year. At the end of September 2023, total contribution by the consortium members was $1.6 billion, of which... Let me repeat, $1.6 billion contribution by all the consortium partners, of which Safaricom share is $833 million, and this includes also the contribution for the M-PESA license that we have acquired. We'd also like to reiterate that our medium-term outlook remains unchanged. The current macro situation does not adversely impact the projected outlook that we had assessed this business to deliver. CapEx projection still remains $1.5 billion-$2 billion.
Site rollout, we have now 2,057 sites. We believe we'll be ending in 10 to 12 years, about 10,000 to 12,000 sites, and we still maintain our EBITDA breakeven target of year four after commercial launch, which is year 2026. We'll continue to provide regular information Ethiopia quarterly basis as promised earlier. Looking at the group net income now, Safaricom Kenya net income grew by 10.9% to KES 41.6 billion. We have assessed an overall net income adjustment of KES 7.7 billion as Ethiopia hyperinflationary impact. KES 7.7 billion. This is in combination of a hyperinflationary monetary gain of KES 13 billion and income state restatement, negative impact of KES 5.3 billion.
So gain of KES 13 billion and negative impact of KES 5.3 billion leads to a net gain in income statement of KES 7.7 billion. The minority interest, as I mentioned before, is the new ownership structure. That is what we have considered. And if we exclude the minority interest, we grew by 2.1%, as you have seen from Peter's slide, the amount is KES 34.2 billion. Of course, this is due to consolidation impact, and as you know, Ethiopia is in investment phase, and we have startup losses that we have to consolidate. Overall, I must say that Ethiopia performance is very well within our expectation. On CapEx, we continue to invest in our network and IT systems to support capacity, upgrade, and user experience.
Our group capital expenditure in the period stood at KES 41.9 billion, of which Ethiopia accounted for 42%, which is KES 17.4 billion. The KES 17.4 billion supported site rollout and other infrastructure required to support commercial momentum and expand coverage of the business. And lastly, I would like to mention of the impact that the conversion rate applied on Safaricom Ethiopia numbers at the group level, and therefore on the impact on the group net income. The conversion rate we use is derived based on how we, our local currencies relate to the dollar. You recall, the investment was made in dollar through our consortium, so we convert local currency to dollar and then dollar to shilling.
And as you know, Kenyan shilling has depreciated faster to US dollar compared to the rate of depreciation of the ETB to the US dollar, resulting to a higher conversion rate of 2.564. I mean, just to summarize, if you do just a constant basis, the constant currency, if you apply that, our group net income, which was shown as 2.1% growth, would have shown a 3.7% growth, as shown in the last column of the table, which is quite encouraging. Ladies and gentlemen, as I close, we are very pleased with the half year 2024 results, and we are looking forward to executing with the same rigor in H2. Just to mention again, that the result materials will be available on our website shortly. Thank you for your time. Back to you, Peter, for FY 2024 guidance.
Great presentation. Great presentation, Peter and Dilip. Peter, before you continue, allow me first to compliment Wim for matching his suit with his phone cover. And, Dilip, you look sharp as always. I'll move to the other side, and let me acknowledge the presence of Michael Joseph. Beautiful maroon tie. Now, back to you, Peter. As you speak on guidance and outlook for anyone who wants a summarized ChatGPT version of our results, what would you say are the main takeaways from our half-year performance?
Thank you, Zuri, and also thank you, Dilip, for a great presentation. And thank you, Zuri, for that reminder. I think the thing I'll say is that we are extremely pleased with the performance that we have delivered at a group level. And I just wanted to summarize a number of things that have gone well. So we have delivered a very strong performance at a group level, which is primarily because we have offered more affordable services to our customers. You'll have seen that we have reduced prices across the board, as we've gone back to charging on M-PESA for by 61%.
We've reduced data price in the past three years by 65% and also voice in Kenya by 45%. And in addition to that, using CVM, we've been able to ensure that customers are able to get services and propositions that meet their needs in a tough economic environment. And also, at the same time, we've also started to manage our costs in a significant way and in particular, energy costs. We are solarizing our plants. We are now about a third of our sites on solar and we intend to accelerate that in the next two years so that we will have all our sites on solar.
In Ethiopia, we've sustained commercial momentum, and with the M-PESA being switched on, we believe that now we are starting on that journey that we know has worked for us in Kenya. But we need to do it in a way that is truly Ethiopian, and ensure that the full benefits of M-PESA accrue to the population. To Ethiopians who we can ensure that they live their lives every day, but also enable business to operate. We've also, in Kenya, been a real digitization partner for the government, both as a customer, but also in terms of ensuring that our population access digital services, enabling our customers to access online services for business, but also for from government.
We look at digitizing government as a way of ensuring that our customers access services which they would ordinarily access in different ways, but access them digitally. And that's why it's so important for us to be involved. And also to support this, you know that mobile devices, and in particular, accessing 4G handsets, has been a critical area that we've been focusing on. So we are pleased to be partnering for the launch of the device assembly, which we launched, which was presided over by the president recently. It will help us accelerate the smartphone penetration. You'll have seen smartphone 4G-enabled smartphone grew by almost 19% on our network and is powering the very strong data growth that you see.
So the ability to provide affordable 4G devices is really critical for the future of our business. And in particular, we believe that if everyone has access to the internet, then they can live their lives in the right way, and this will be a major area of focus. And finally, we've also optimized our operations, as I've said, managing costs in a way that is sustainable, in particular on energy, but also starting to manage the effects of foreign exchange movements that we are seeing. And then going forward, we'll continue to stay true to our strategy. We will continue to focus on the customer, in particular, the whole aspects of making it easier, making it simple, and making sure the experience is great.
We will keep pushing on accelerating new growth areas. You'll have seen that we are making progress on IoT, ICT. We are making progress on some of the new areas on the financial services, and also fiber is looking good. We need to—although coming off a low base in some of these businesses, they'll be the businesses of the future. We'll continue to drive digital acceleration and digital transformation, in particular, building capability, and also really investing in new capabilities in digital engineering, and you'll have seen a lot of that from my presentation. In a current environment, when...
where the global macroeconomic will continue to be a challenge. Productivity will enable us lower the cost so that we can invest in further price reduction for customers. And we want to be seen as the technology partner of choice in digitizing Kenya, and soon in Ethiopia. And in Ethiopia, ensuring we build commercial momentum, we continue to roll out the network, and ensure that in time, we stay within our business plan that we expected to deliver in Ethiopia. So we remain focused on executing our H2 performance, and we are pleased with the H1. Now, I will move into our guidance.
With the improved performance that we have seen in this first half, we are revising our FY 2024 guidance for Kenya for both earnings before interest and tax, and also for capital expenditure. Our EBIT, which is our earnings before interest and tax guidance, improves from, improves by KES 12 billion, from a range of KES 17 billion-KES 120 billion, to a range of KES 129 billion-KES 132 billion. Which is a significant step up in terms of guidance. Our CapEx guidance also changes to a range of KES 45 billion-KES 48 billion, an increase, the majority driven by currency impact, because a lot of our equipment is imported, especially radio network, and related to the Kenyan shilling depreciation. That is purely on Kenya.
This consequently changes our group guidance on EBIT to a range of KES 87 billion-KES 93 billion, and CapEx to a range of KES 85 billion-KES 93 billion respectively. Safaricom Ethiopia guidance on both EBIT and CapEx remain unchanged. We have, however, in Ethiopia, reviewed our GSM customer target to 7 million from the earlier forecast of 10 million, largely driven because of some of the disruptions we've witnessed in the Amhara region. So we remain confident on meeting our Ethiopia guidance from a profit and also CapEx perspective, notwithstanding some of the challenges that we have noted. So in conclusion, I want to thank the board for their support during this period. I want to thank my colleagues here in Kenya, but also in Ethiopia, for their hard work, their dedication, and their commitment.
To all our partners, whether those are dealers, suppliers, agents, thank you for your support and collaboration. And our partners includes regulators and other partners that are external. Thank you for your support and collaboration that has enabled us to deliver performance and achievements that we have delivered today. To all our customers, I thank you for your continued loyalty and confidence in us. I look forward to your continued support during the second half of this financial year, and we seek to see the momentum that we've gained in H1, helping us deliver in the full year. I now invite our chairman to make his closing remarks, and he'll be doing that remotely. Thank you very much.
Fellow shareholders, representatives of the investment community , the board, management and staff of Safaricom PLC, members of the media, and the online community, good morning. Thank you for joining us for the half year 2024 results announcement. Thanks to technology, the foundation of our business, we can virtually engage this morning as I'm unable to join you in person. A quick review of our business performance. We have delivered stellar results in Kenya and have managed to achieve key milestones in our Ethiopia rollout. The board is pleased with improved business performance. The highlights signified by double-digit growth in group service revenue. As Dilip said, "We recorded double-digit growth across key P&L lines in Kenya." This is testament that our strategy is working well. In Ethiopia, we have seen a strong momentum trajectory, which points to the potential we see in that market.
I'm well aware that the rollout of the network is on course, and that the commercial teams are actively driving customer acquisitions. With M-PESA now available, we can only expect to see greater acceleration and usage as we go into the second half of this year. It's worth noting that recording a growth of 2.1% in group net income, excluding minority interest, is also very, very encouraging. Ethiopia is going to be a key contributor to our growth strategy into the future. We have stayed true to our vision as set out in the five-year strategy of transforming Safaricom from a telco into a TechCo. The macroeconomic environment has been difficult. The board expresses its appreciation and confidence to the management for maintaining its strategic focus. We are cognizant of the longer-than-expected headwinds and economic challenges encountered in both Kenya and Ethiopia.
The global geopolitical issues, rising inflation, currency depreciation, higher cost of living, have taken a major toll on our customers' wallets and strained most households. The Kenyan shilling depreciation against the US dollar by 22.7% as of September signifies the tough operating environment that the business operated under. The board is aware of these challenges and continues to work with Peter and team to find innovative solutions to our societal issues and enhance revenue generation. We have also taken note of the notable policies and regulatory developments. We are encouraged by the continuous engagement we have with our regulators. The reduction in excise duty on telephone and internet data services was a welcome relief to our customers. We call on the government to also consider reducing the excise duty rate on mobile money transfer services.
The conducive regulatory environment is important for our own growth, especially considering the rapidly evolving technologies. We remain committed to working with government, regulators, and other stakeholders to strengthen regulation in key sector issues such as mobile money, data privacy, spectrum, among others. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now speak about the board's commitment to supporting Kenyans through various initiatives. Transforming lives is at the heart of what we do at Safaricom. I'm proud of some of our numbers that came out of the recent sustainability report. Key among them being that our impact on society now stands at 14.6x the profit we made in the last financial year of KES 62.3 billion. During this period, our philanthropy arm, the Safaricom Foundation, turned 20.
Through the foundation, we have built a footprint in all 47 counties, partnered with over 44,000 partners, implemented over 4,000 projects, and have invested over KES 6 billion in Kenyan communities. These investments have impacted close to 10 million Kenyans. As we celebrate 20 years of impacting lives positively, we hope to inspire hope for a brighter future through sustained community engagements. The M-PESA Foundation, which has been in existence for 13 years, has invested over KES 21 billion, impacting another 3.2 million Kenyans. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to congratulate the team that worked hard to deliver the East Africa Device Assembly Kenya, the first of its kind in Kenya. The recent launch by His Excellency, the President, was a momentous occasion, and the board looks forward to seeing millions of Kenyans benefit from 4G devices that are assembled locally.
We will continue to work with the management to deliver value to our shareholders. We fully support Peter and his team as he executes the business strategy that will see us become a fully fledged technology company. The board would like to extend our deep appreciation to the management, stakeholders, and all the members of staff across the group for their efforts and commitment during this economically challenging year. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I will now leave Peter and Dilip to answer your questions. Thank you.