Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Financial Results Announcement for Safaricom PLC for the Period Ended 31 March 2025. On behalf of our Board of Directors, the Management Team, and the staff of Safaricom PLC, we thank you very much for joining us in person and virtually for this event. My name is Caroline Wambugu. I head the Financial Planning, Analysis, and Investor Relations team here in Safaricom, and I'll be your moderator for the day. I'm glad we can meet and engage in this manner and connect virtually as we have the discussion this morning. Should you like to keep your social media followers updated, our hashtag today is #SafaricomFYResults and is now displayed on your screen: #SafaricomFYResults. In staying committed to our promise of diversity and inclusion, our sign language interpreters today are Esther Kendi and Wanja Ndegwa.
To kick us off, we will start with our Group Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Peter Ndegwa, who will give us a business overview delving into our purpose and strategy. He will then be followed by our Group Chief Financial Officer, Dilip Pal, who will take us through the financial performance and results for the period under review. Peter then will come back and give a summary and the FY 2026 outlook. This will then pave way for our Chairman, Adil Khawaja, who will share his closing remarks. Thereafter, we will have a question-and-answer session for us in the room and, of course, for yourselves as well who are following us online. For you online, we would like you to share your questions with us through the Menti platform, that is the www.menti.com platform, and use the code that is now displayed on your screen. The code is 16795232. I'll repeat that again: 16795232 on the Menti platform.
With that, ladies and gentlemen, allow me now to welcome our Group CEO, Dr. Peter Ndegwa, to make his presentation. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Good morning, those in the room. Wow. Good morning once again. Excellent. Yeah. So, fantastic video that we started with. That is a program that we are running for socially protected individuals, the elderly, those with disabilities. It's called Inua Jamii in Kenya. It is covering about 1.8 million beneficiaries on a monthly basis. And as you know, social protection is one of the key rights within our constitution under Article 43. So, it's fantastic to see our company actually delivering through technology and allowing individuals to access benefits. So, fantastic. So, fellow shareholders, representatives of the investor community, the board, management, and staff of Safaricom Group, members of the media and the online community, invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, whether you are joining in person or online, thank you for joining us this morning as we release our financial results for the year ended 31 March 2025.
Today, I'll cover a number of areas: an update on our brand and our purpose, a recap of our recently concluded five-year strategy cycle, Vision 2030, and the transition to the next phase of our strategy, operating review for the financial year 2025, our group performance for the year, and our outlook and guidance for financial year 2026. Let me start with the brand and purpose. The past year marked significant milestones for Safaricom in Safaricom journey. We celebrated 24 years of serving customers and communities, initiating a year-long countdown to our silver jubilee later in October this year. In March, we also celebrated, or rather, M-PESA turned 18, solidifying its role in financial inclusion and economic empowerment, whilst M-PESA Foundation marked 15 years of transforming lives. Since its inception, M-PESA has contributed greatly towards financial inclusion, from about 19% in 2006 to 85% in 2024.
These achievements reflect our commitment to innovation, to societal progress, and prove that purpose-driven solutions create lasting change. From empowering micro, small, and medium enterprises with Pochi la Biashara to helping farmers access credit and fertilizer subsidy, M-PESA has transformed lives. We are proud, but remain focused on the future. To mark M-PESA's birthday in March, we recently hosted a one-of-its-kind 18-hour party. This is what the brand people like. Here are the highlights of that celebration. You can play the video, please.
My dream is to fly over the rainbow so high. Rise up, don't fall in trouble again. Rise up, love's like my greatest shame. I try to fly, I'll fly so high.
You should clap for the team that delivered that. Yeah. I just needed to say that we had over 12,000 largely young customers from across the country who enjoyed that event. Some of us were able only to stay until around midnight. I know there are some of us who stayed for much later. Let's briefly look at our recognitions during the year. This landmark year was capped off by multiple awards honoring our leadership in people-first practices, diversity and inclusion, and responsible business. Our standout achievement was being certified as a top employer in Ethiopia, in Kenya, and across Africa, a testament of our commitment to world-class workplace standards. These accolades reflect the dedication of our team in driving meaningful change, tackling societal challenges, and delivering exceptional customer experiences. Let us now see how we showed up for our communities.
At the heart of our mission is our unwavering commitment to transforming lives, a purpose that dwells in every decision that we make. During our concluded five-year strategic cycle, our foundations invested over KES 18 billion, transforming more than 13 million lives through various programs in education, in health, in environment, and in economic empowerment. By aligning business goals with community needs, we are accelerating sustainable growth driven by environmental, social, and governance principles. Let us see how our culture has helped guide our strategy execution. To achieve our transition to Ateco, we developed a culture framework, which we refer to here in Safaricom as Safaricom Spirit, and it became the foundation of our ambition. The spirit of Safaricom defines our passion for innovation, encourages our collaboration, fuels our customer obsession, and reaffirms our purpose.
Zero harm philosophy is now embedded in our culture with leadership fostering accountability and vigilance. Now, looking at the outcomes of the five-year strategic execution. In addition to culture, we were resolute in our strategy execution. We diversified financial services beyond payments into wealth management and credit. We protected and grew connectivity business despite various elements of price collections and adjustments. In enterprise, we powered businesses and pioneered public sector digitization solutions, like you have seen with Inua Jamii, that has transformed the industry. We scaled fixed broadband business, doubling homes' past and growing connections fourfold. We expanded beyond borders with our bold move into Ethiopia, a greenfield operation now serving 9 million customers, and you hear a lot about Ethiopia today.
Turning our focus to our next five-year strategy cycle, our Vision 2030 sets the foundation to become Africa's leading purpose-led technology company, harnessing innovation for social good and shaping the future of Kenya, Ethiopia, and beyond. Our next five years—in the next five years, we will protect and grow our core business, accelerate our transition into our technology company, boost and evolve our Ethiopia business, and unlock value through innovative delivery models. Customers remain at the center of what we do, and we aim to deliver superior experiences as a key differentiator. For us to achieve this, we have highlighted six strategic priorities that I'll highlight a few elements. 4G for all by accelerating device affordability in Kenya and Ethiopia. AI and hyper-personalization by treating every customer as a segment of one. Growth beyond payments in financial services by scaling digital services and having more use cases for Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia, we are on a path to profitability and sustainable funding for that business. For private sector enterprise and public sector will be the backbone of Africa's digitization. For fixed broadband business, we will scale beyond connectivity with over 1 million connected homes and businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how we will future-proof Safaricom by balancing growth today with innovation for tomorrow. Now, let us now turn our focus to the year ended 31 March 2025, starting with Kenya. Starting off by reviewing the environment that the business operated within. Kenya's macroeconomic stability remains promising, but pressure on disposable income and competition demanded active focus on delivering value-driven customer propositions. Despite GDP growth, there was notable increase in fiscal pressure for the government, and also with higher interest rates shrinking private sector credit growth. Regulatory and industry dynamics presented both challenges but also opportunities.
Notwithstanding the existing regulatory shifts, we continue to strengthen industry collaboration at regulatory and government levels. Now, looking at the shape of our Kenya business, our Kenya business remains resilient. The voice business is healthy and stable compared to global declining trends. We are encouraged by the uptick of 4G devices with over 23 million customers now using 4G+ devices on our network. As such, we continue investing in our network, our coverage across the country, transitioning customers from 2 to 4G devices, and accelerating 5G and fixed wireless and fiber rollout. M-PESA enjoys extensive reach through our 300,000 strong agent network across the country. How have we performed in the period? We've delivered strong revenue growth with double-digit trajectory in mobile data, in mobile money, and in fixed broadband.
We successfully deployed agile ways of working across 75% of our operations, and 100% of our employees, including myself, are AI-trained to enhance efficiency and innovation. We transformed 75% of our operations to agile, whilst equipping everyone with AI training, driving faster results, promoting innovation spirit, and enhancing efficiency. We leveraged AI for smart segmentation, for dynamic pricing, for fraud detection, and customer protection, driving operational excellence. These developments have reinforced our customer trust whilst optimizing service delivery and ensuring seamless and secure experiences. Now, I'll go through highlights of our individual business areas. Turning our focus to our consumer business in Kenya, we continue to develop our segmented approach with customized products for the youth via Safaricom Hook, and more recently, we launched Emerald for our achievers segment.
The integrated customer offerings, bundled services, and personalized solutions have reduced friction in customer journeys and experiences across our customer segments. We continue driving engagement for our home and broadband customers through partnership in content. Turning now to our financial services area, we are diversifying our ecosystem, moving beyond payments to become a holistic financial and digital lifestyle partner. Strong uptick of Pochi la Biashara underscores our commitment to empowering micro and small businesses with tailored solutions. Through Ziidi, M-PESA, Ratiba, and device insurance, we are bridging the critical gaps and enhancing financial inclusion with next-gen fintech solutions. Building on the success of consumer credit, we are now offering merchant term loans and unlocking growth for businesses with flexible financing. In addition, we continue enabling customers to do more on our apps with the aim of being a digital lifestyle enabler.
Now, turning on over to enterprise and public sector. One of the objectives in our vision is to be the digitization and financial services partner of choice for enterprise and public sector. Through cutting-edge secure technology, we'll enable businesses and governments to thrive in an increasingly digital world. We've expanded our cybersecurity solutions and strengthened our Safaricom business brand. We've enabled national and county governments to collect and disburse funds efficiently to advance financial inclusion and to make citizen services more accessible. Our innovations have accelerated digitization, transformed industries, and deepened public sector collaboration, solidifying our tech leadership. Lastly, but not the least, looking at the status of our fixed broadband business. This is a business with huge growth potential. We are focused on delivering fixed broadband solutions through fiber, fixed wireless, satellite, and other evolving technology to meet diverse customer needs.
We've expanded our distribution of fixed solutions via large retail chains, making our products more accessible to our customers. We are also looking at opportunities to partner with satellite operators to offer more options and reach for our customers. We continue to delight our customers by adopting more value and experience at the same price points, thanks to cost optimization initiatives across the business. I'll now turn on to focusing and reviewing the performance and the highlights of our Ethiopia business. Starting with the operating environment in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has made progress in addressing external imbalances and improving the business climate. In March 2025, the regulators licensed the first two investment banks following financial sector reforms, including the Ethiopia Security Exchange launch in January 2025. These steps boost investor confidence, enhance liquidity, and create value for issuers and investors.
We are encouraged by the market adjustment to foreign exchange reforms and a resilient GDP, supported by economic reforms, stability, and sector growth. As noted in our half-year results in October and November, we've taken measures to mitigate short-term and medium-term impact of the foreign exchange reforms, and you'll be hearing more about that. Sustaining momentum will require navigating macroeconomic shifts, political dynamics, and regulatory changes in Ethiopia. Let me now briefly touch on some of the community partnerships that we have had during the year. More specifically, what we did to contribute to Ethiopia's digital future. We've ramped up our engagement, especially in the regions, with different initiatives empowering local communities. We've established partnerships in sectors such as education, where we are providing technology support in schools in line with supporting Ethiopia's digital agenda.
We are focused on sustainable growth, leveraging the country's youthful population and low penetration of connectivity and fintech. We are building strong partnerships across the industry and micro, small, and medium-term enterprises, MSMEs, with a view of coming together to provide more value for Ethiopians. Finally, we are improving financial inclusion amongst various communities with engagement in agriculture and health. We are pleased by the strong commercial momentum that our Ethiopia business continues to deliver. With over 100 sites, which is about half of what we have in Kenya in total network, we are covering 50% of the country's population, of which almost 9 million are actively using our services. Our network is enabling a strong data consumption, averaging 6.5 Gb per user, and fueling the shift towards a connected digital economy. With a youthful population, Ethiopia offers immense growth opportunities as we expand our reach and offerings.
M-PESA is evolving into a full mobile financial platform, starting with payments for utilities, with plans to introduce credit, savings, and as more adoption grows. Now that I've spoken about both Kenya and Ethiopia, I will now focus on the group performance and how we performed during the year. I know this is what everyone has been waiting for. All the rest have been starters and so on and so forth. You won't be disappointed. This year, we didn't just grow. We accelerated with double-digit growth in both revenue and net income. Safaricom Kenya, if you have your calculator, starts to divide by 129, which was the exchange rate.
Safaricom Kenya achieved KES 381 billion in total revenue, which is up 11.4%, with earnings before interest and taxes, which we call EBIT, growing by 13% to KES 158 billion, and net income growing at 12.7% to KES 95.5 billion, almost KES 100 billion at a bottom-line level. You should clap. I'm sure the people online are clapping. The middle bit is quite important. Excluding the impact of currency reforms, which you have seen affecting Ethiopia, and what we call hyperinflationary accounting, which is reflected in our group results. Group revenue went up to 12.9%, with EBIT growing by 16.2% and net income climbing by 14.2%. Double-digit growth across the board. I should have said the middle bit excludes the impact of currency reforms and hyperinflationary accounting. The bottom bit is now the reported earnings.
Including the impact, which is the bottom row, including the impact of currency reforms in Ethiopia and hyperinflationary accounting, group revenue, this is the big number, hit KES 388.7 billion, up 11.2%, while EBIT grew by an impressive 29.5% to KES 104.1 billion. With net income still in growth despite all the factors, including effects and the hyperinflationary accounting, net income growing 10.8% to close at KES 69.8 billion. This is excluding minority interest. So, ladies and gentlemen, we are encouraged to note that Ethiopia will be accretive. This was the year where we had the highest amount of losses in our business. So it will be accretive to the business going forward, and you'll see it reflected in our financial year 2026 guidance. But I think you should clap for the teams.
At this juncture, I'll then hand over to Dilip to take us through the performance in much greater detail. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Peter. Morning, morning, everyone. I don't know whether there is anything else to be spoken about the business. Do we? We have, right? Good morning once again. It's my pleasure to welcome all of you, virtually as well as in person, to present our full-year financial performance for the year ended 31st March 2025. The fiscal year under review has been extremely eventful as we marked major growth milestones as a company. These milestones are the foundation for the solid performance that we are discussing this morning. As usual, just to note that the detailed financial results will be available on our website right after this session.
Now, I will talk about a little bit more details of financial performance, the health of the business beyond what you've seen in the numbers. I will start with Kenya performance, and I will start with customers. The customer base grew significantly across all segments of our business. The overall 30-day active customers grew by 7.1% to 37.1 million, the highest year-over-year growth in four years. At this rate, we will not finish the presentation because there is a lot coming. One-month active M-PESA customers grew incrementally by 3.4 million in one year, a double-digit growth of 10.5%. This was also the highest year-over-year growth that we have seen in the last four years. Connectivity customers also grew by 7.1%, also the highest in the last four years.
The last segment, which is the fixed data, grew double-digit, actually grew by 20.5%, and we have sustained a double-digit growth in fixed data every year since 2019. Now, moving into revenue, I'll start with service revenue. This slide is quite familiar to you. To start with, double-digit growth, and this is on the back of a double-digit growth seen in the prior year, and it's the first time we have recorded consecutive double-digit year-over-year growth in service revenue since 2018. Customer growth that I just spoke about drove 5% of the revenue growth, the service revenue growth, and with ARPU contributing 4.8% of the growth, which basically signifies that our health of the growth is quite good, driven by both customers as well as by ARPU.
The slide on the right side, which gives the evolution of the contribution of the various businesses, you can see that the contribution is changing more towards M-PESA. M-PESA now contributes 44.2% of the revenue. We experience growth across all segments of revenue. Fixed revenue grew by 12.9%. Connectivity revenue registered a high single-digit growth of 6.5%. M-PESA grew by 15.2%, contributing 61% of the incremental revenue growth for the business. All these three areas have grown in line with, just to remind all of you, our medium-term outlook shared earlier in the year in our investor forum. We will provide more detailed explanation for each of these business segments in the slides later. Let me start with M-PESA. M-PESA has recently celebrated, as you have seen, the 18th anniversary and delivered another year of stellar top-line growth.
The M-PESA revenue profile, as you can see in the left top chart, has evolved. Withdrawal revenue, which used to contribute 38% of the revenue five years ago, now contributes 23%. Business payments grew 27.4% and were the biggest contributor to year-over-year growth for the second year in a row, contributing half of growth in M-PESA revenue. Financial service revenue, which is one of our new growth areas, majorly consisting of credit, wealth, and insurance, grew 5.2% year-over-year. As you can see from the chart on the right side, which is the volumes and values, which signifies that M-PESA ecosystems continues to expand. Total volume and value of M-PESA transactions grew by 29.5% and 1.6% year-on-year, reaching 37.2 billion transactions and KES 38.3 trillion, respectively.
We have sustained growth in usage, with chargeable transactions per one-month active customers growing 20.3% to close at 37.9%, while the pay rate, which is what the monetization on the M-PESA has remained stable over the year at 0.62%. Now, going a little bit deeper into the key growth areas of M-PESA, where we have seen accelerated growth as we continue to innovate. In the payment space, merchant payments for both formal and informal, that is Lipa Na M-PESA and Pochi la Biashara, made significant progress with combined merchant base closing at 1.8 million, a growth of 44.2% year-over-year. Merchant payments grew significantly, driven by Pochi la Biashara. The number of merchants doubled to 1.1 million. Pochi la Biashara merchants doubled to 1.1 million, and the revenue tripled to KES 2.2 billion. Overall, revenue from merchant ecosystems increased by 20.5% year-on-year.
On the new growth areas, wealth management products, which you have recently launched, held KES 9.6 billion in assets under management, with 631,000 active customers. We also launched insurance products in the year. Despite being operational just for a few months, we have seen very good traction with 411,000 policies issued and KES 3.3 billion of sum issued. The opportunity is great in this area. Still on M-PESA, as I mentioned, the credit portfolio is on recovery path, growing 5.1% year-over-year, with higher growth momentum of 9.3% in H2. In the past two years, there had been a slowdown in credit growth due to Fuliza repricing. The higher volumes did not offset the decline in prices. Fuliza is back to growth, both in customers as well as revenue in FY 2025, as you can see from the chart on the bottom left.
Fuliza revenue makes up 48% of the credit revenue growth and has grown by 5.6% compared to last year. We enhanced our credit limits as part of our response to customer needs, and this drove higher utilization, with volume increasing by 24.2% year-on-year to 4.1 billion and values at KES 1.1 trillion. We also rolled out merchant lending products, and we have seen very good progress on that as well. This is one area where we see great potential for growth as we work together with our partners to meet the growing needs of our customers. Another interesting area, which is our super apps. These super apps, both consumer and business, play a vital role in facilitating digital transition to support consumer lifestyle and business transactions. Both of them are gaining momentum, and our focus is on customers.
As you can see, consumer app customers grew by 30%, and merchants, the business apps, the active merchants actually doubled to 301,000. The value transacted on the consumer app grew by 16.1% to KES 2.3 trillion, with the business app recording KES 0.9 trillion in value transacted, which is a growth of 77.3% year-over-year. Both apps put together now contribute 8.4% of M-PESA's total revenue. Please note that more detailed information on M-PESA's performance you can see in our results booklet, which will be available on our website shortly. Now, moving to connectivity business, this primarily includes voice, mobile data, messaging, incoming, and also content. This has grown 6.5% year-over-year, as I mentioned before, accounting for 34% of the incremental service revenue growth. We recorded growth across all lines of revenue except incoming revenue, which is a decline because of reduction in MTR.
Voice revenue and messaging revenue grew at 1.6%, an excellent result given the structural pressure on this segment from other mature markets that you have seen. Mobile data grew by an impressive 15.2% year-on-year, accounting for 82% of the connectivity revenue growth. Another emerging area is digital content, where we have been focusing a lot, recording an impressive 53.3% year-over-year growth. Our customer value management initiatives and big data and analytics capabilities have significantly improved our ability to provide targeted offerings to our customers, as Peter mentioned before. I'll speak a little bit in detail about one of the growth segments, which is mobile data, in the next slide. We have been on a mission to put 4G+ devices in the hands of our customers, ensuring they have the best experience. The number of 4G+ devices reached 23.4 million, which is an impressive growth of 33.3% year-over-year.
This includes over 1 million 5G devices. We continue to support customers in acquiring 4G-enabled devices through our affordable device financing offer, Lipa Mdogo Mdogo, and have sold about 2 million devices to date from the launch, with 700,000 of them coming only in the last financial year. This increase in device, coupled with the provision of right content and personalized offers to our customers through the big data and analytics, drove usage, with the average usage per user reaching 4.2 GB per customer per month, marking a 13.9% increase year-over-year. Mobile data now accounts for 20% of our service revenue and contributed 27.9% of the growth in service revenue. Finally, on revenue, which is the last slide on the revenue, it's fixed revenue.
Our fixed revenue has recorded year-on-year growth of 12.9%, an acceleration of prior year's growth of 12.2%, reaching KES 17.1 billion revenue, mainly attributed to good momentum that we have seen on customer growth. Fixed business experienced customer growth across all segments. Home segment makes up 44.3% of fixed service revenue, recording a 16.6% growth, and the enterprise segment growing by 13.4%. The chart on the right indicates that the active home customers have increased by 21.3%, crossing the 300,000 mark, with enterprise fixed customers growing 17.5% to 70,000 mark. This advancement highlights our commitment to enhancing our fixed service offers, expanding our customer base, and venturing into promising technology domains. Now, shifting gears to cost, I'll talk about operating cost and the direct cost. To start with, our cost-to-sales ratios have been very, very stable, reflecting on an operating cost-to-sales ratio of 17.9%.
With direct cost, which is reflected in the contribution margin, we have a very healthy contribution margin of 71.8%. The operating cost went up by 14.4% to KES 68.1 billion. This has been majorly driven by network operating cost and our payroll cost that comes as a part of our annual increase that we give to our employees. The network operating cost is coming from the expansion in the network, which is also resulting in higher energy consumption. Our 5G footprint, which was 800 last year, has now crossed 1,700 sites, more than doubled in one year. Overall, it is encouraging to see that OpEx intensity is stable. The graph on the right side shows the direct cost growth. As you can see, direct cost grew 7.2%, slower than the revenue growth. If we exclude the handset cost out of it, the actual direct cost grew by 3% year-over-year.
We continue to look for opportunities to create efficiencies through sustainable initiatives that will lock in value into the future and invest in revenue-generating initiatives in the newer areas. Moving to debt and the free cash flow, a very impressive free cash flow growth of 18.2% year-over-year on the back of a very strong performance. Debt position has grown by 5.4% to KES 80 billion, as shown in the table on the left, with the net debt at KES 64.5 billion. This is partly due to an additional sustainability-linked loan of KES 15 billion we took to finance our investments and offset by repayments in the period. We witnessed a 12.5% growth in finance cost, driven by cost increase coming from the interest rate increase. However, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio remains healthy at 0.31x.
To wrap up now Kenya performance, I want to highlight that the company demonstrates remarkable resilience as we transition into the next five-year strategic phase. In summary, maybe a repeat of what Peter already said, double-digit growth across all financial metrics, an impressive service revenue performance, double-digit growth of 10.5%, robust year-on-year double-digit growth in EBITDA as well, and crossing the KES 200 billion shilling mark. 13% growth in EBIT to close at the higher end of our guidance for FY 2025, and an increase in the operating free cash flow also by 15.8% to KES 148.9 billion. Now, moving to Ethiopia. In the Investor Forum in February, we said that the baby, which is Safaricom Ethiopia, is making more confident steps, which is a sign of maturity. That sign of maturity is actually reflected.
As you have been on three and a half years' commercial operations in Ethiopia, this business actually contributed 9% to our growth, group service revenue growth. We are truly, truly encouraged by the commercial momentum that we see in Ethiopia, especially considering the tough macroeconomic environment with the currency reforms. On customers, our 90-day active customers across all segments have doubled. Voice customers doubled to 7.8 million. Data customers 2.5x to 7.1 million. M-PESA customers closed at 2.4 million, also doubling in the second half of the year. This is what has resulted in a 90-day active customers reach now 8.8 million, which is in line with our assumption in the guidance that we gave in FY 2025. We said 7 million-10 million customers for GSM. We are truly, truly encouraged by this progress and are on track to meet our commercial scale targets.
Usage and output, very encouraging again, and more encouraging in the growth in the voice usage has now touched, has grown 80% year-over-year, has now touched 127.3 minutes per customer per month. Data usage, which has been the most satisfying journey so far, continued to grow and now reached 6.5 GB per chargeable customer per month. We have also seen trajectory across all segments on outputs, also driven by the price increase that we have taken in the second half of the year. Mobile data output doubled year-on-year to KES 120.3. These are all in local currency. Voice output grew by 50% and is starting to show traction. With the customers and the usage and the output growth, it is what is resulting in the service revenue growth.
In local currency terms, service revenue more than tripled to ETB 6.9 billion, as shown in the bar on the left bottom corner. Mobile data revenue continues to account for a significant portion of this, with 75.4% coming from mobile data. Voice revenue also recorded an impressive growth of 40.9%. In M-PESA, you have seen the customers are growing, and we have also now commenced the fuel payment, which we have been waiting for long. On M-PESA, again, 18% of our airtime is now purchased through M-PESA. On funding and CapEx, this is an important slide as we update our investors and analysts. Let me start with first the total funding. The total funding from the consortium at the end of March 2025 stood at $2.27 billion, with additional $410 million in the year under review.
This funding has mostly been done through equity, with consortium members' equity funding at a total of $2.1 billion, and Safaricom's contribution was $1.037 billion. On CapEx, we have invested a total of $1.2 billion over the past four years, staying within our projected $1.3 billion cap for the five-year peak investment period that we have spoken about before. We continue to assess the funding needs of Safaricom Ethiopia more regularly to ensure that the business is running smoothly. I just want to highlight Ethiopia's overall financial performance, given that the half year there has been major incident or major event of currency reforms, which resulted in a significant devaluation of currency. As you can see from the chart, the underlying performance, excluding just the depreciation of birr, recorded an improved performance year-over-year on all fronts: EBITDA, EBIT, and net loss, and net loss excluding minute interest.
As you can see, the EBITDA, which was a loss of KES 21.4 billion in FY 2024, excluding depreciation impact, we are reporting a loss of KES 8.8 billion. We have also taken quite a lot of measures to cushion the impact of depreciation, and we have spoken about that before. This includes renegotiating foreign denominated contracts, onboarding ETB-based vendors for civil power works, reducing our expatriate numbers, and of course, an industry-wide price increase, both in voice and data. We believe the industry price increase is something to expect in the future, given a very low price environment in Ethiopia. These measures will go a long way in ensuring the future sustainability of Ethiopia's business performance. Coming to the group performance now, let me start with CapEx. As we continue to invest in our network, both in our network capacity, coverage, and also IT.
IT is becoming a very important part of our investment as we are becoming a more and more technology company, providing solutions in our strategy to become Africa's leading purpose-led technology company. Group capital expenditure, as you have seen, stood at KES 91.3 billion. 43% of that is from Ethiopia, which was KES 39.2 billion. You can see from the chart at the top left, Ethiopia CapEx peaked in FY 2023, which was KES 56.8 billion. After that, it is now in decline. Kenya's CapEx intensity, as we have mentioned before, remains stable at a mid-teens level of 13.7%. Moving to the group performance, bringing it all together, you have seen this, but you can clap one more time when I finish this one. Not yet. Now, looking at the overall performance, just to reaffirm that we had an outstanding year for Kenya with impressive double-digit growth across all financial metrics.
Both on reported and constant currency basis, the group reported strong double-digit growth in service revenue, EBIT, and net income, excluding minute interest. The group's net income, excluding minute interest, improved significantly. As you can see from the middle of the graph, which you have given a split of H1 and H2, there was a decline of 17.7% in net income in H1, and you can see a growth of 44.4% in H2, resulting in the reported numbers which Peter spoke about is 10.8% growth in group reported net income. You would recall this is one of the discussions that we had in the first half of the year when the currency depreciation impact we have reflected in our financials. Our Ethiopia business, as Peter mentioned, is gaining scale, and this will definitely have an overall positive impact on the group performance.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes my presentation. Our attention now shifts to FY 2026 execution as we implement our various initiatives for Vision 2030. 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 additional remarks and guidance.
When you deliver great performance, you need more water. Thank you. Thank you, Dilip. Yeah. Thank you, Dilip. When you're announcing great results, both the CEO and CFO's job is made much easier. You can see the CFO is very relaxed today. I had to say that, Dilip. Ladies and gentlemen, given that you have had both the overview from myself, but also the detail from Dilip, let me take a moment over the next few minutes to summarize the key takeouts from the impressive numbers that, in particular, Dilip has presented.
We had great performance in both operating companies in Kenya and Ethiopia, while within their guidance that we gave to investors. Consequently, the group performance was well within the guidance, again, that we provided to investors last year. I'll be coming now to the 2026 guidance. We had a strong and healthy business and have recorded growth across all key metrics. We have exhibited strong customer engagement and innovative spirit, reflecting on our Safaricom spirit. Ethiopia has performed greatly, continuing to drive commercial momentum and contributing close to 10% of our group revenue, and now starting to become very accretive. This is despite significant foreign exchange reforms. We have successfully transitioned to our next strategy cycle and charted our next strategic framework.
This framework will enable us to achieve our vision of being Africa's leading purpose-led technology company by 2030. Finally, Safaricom PLC has achieved significant milestones, and you'll be hearing a lot more from the chairman if you calculated the numbers at a top-line level in dollar terms. We will be announcing a big number there in dollar terms as we get close to being a technology company on a total revenue basis. In terms of 2026, just in highlights, which is this year now, we will accelerate scalable technology solutions as we defend and grow our core business. We will achieve this by delivering safe and secure, and I repeat that, safe and secure, digital-first customer experiences, and most importantly, enhance our brand while living the Safaricom spirit.
To succeed, we'll enforce discipline in our execution, optimize our costs, nurture, and maintain a positive regulatory environment, and consistently engage our customers and commit to a zero-harm safety culture. Now, I'll go to the next big thing, which, of course, investors and analysts would be expecting, which is dividends. In line with our purpose of transforming lives, we'll continue creating value for our shareholders. During the year, the board approved payment of an interim dividend of KES 0.55 per ordinary share for those who are shareholders. Please start removing your calculator to KES 22 billion for the interim dividend. The board has resolved to recommend to the shareholders at the forthcoming general meeting in July a final dividend of KES 0.65 per ordinary share.
This brings the dividends payable for the financial year 2025 to KES 1.20 per share, equivalent to KES 48 billion. I'd like you to note that we are paying a similar dividend to what we paid over the past two years, actually three years. Rather, we will have paid the similar dividends over a three-year period, despite funding Ethiopia and also the short-term effect of the foreign exchange reforms that we have seen in Ethiopia, which is very commendable. That one, I expect a clap. This goes to reiterate our exceptional performance in our Kenya business, which offset the foreign exchange corrections in Ethiopia. That said, it also says that in the future, we will see Ethiopia really contributing significantly to our group profits or to our group numbers, and you'll see that in the guidance, which is the next slide.
Now I'll go to what most analysts and investors also look at, which is what is our expectation for this financial year. You can see very strong numbers in terms of our guidance. We guide that the Kenya earnings before interest and taxes will range between KES 170 billion-KES 173 billion, representing a growth of 9.2% on the upper end and 8.3% on the midpoint, which shows that this continues to be a very solid and growing business. In Ethiopia, we are guiding an EBIT loss, which you'll see is a significant step down or a reduction from this year to between KES 23 billion and KES 26 billion. Group EBIT is projected to be between KES 144 billion-KES 150 billion. Here it is. It's a 50% year-on-year increase, now showing that Ethiopia starts to become really accretive to group profitability.
The Kenya capital expenditure, the Kenya business capital expenditure, will continue to be robust at KES 54 billion-KES 57 billion to support the growth that you are seeing in our Kenya business, whilst Ethiopia CapEx is a step down, which is KES 18 billion-KES 21 billion because we are past the peak investment phase. This is about half of last year's CapEx as we get closer to the infrastructure scale of 4,000 sites targeted in the medium-term guidance provided in the past. In Ethiopia, we also guide on our acceleration on the customer side. The primary focus remains attaining our commercial scale by achieving in this financial year of 2026, 15 million-17 million 90-day customers by the end of financial year 2026. This is almost double what the business has achieved in financial year 2025. You should clap for Ethiopia there.
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, we are proud of our performance this year as we gear up to celebrate our Silver Jubilee in October. I want to thank all our valued customers for their confidence in us. To our shareholders, thank you for your continued belief and investment in this business. I would like to thank our Chairman, Adil, and also our board for the support accorded to myself and my leadership team. To my colleagues in Kenya and Ethiopia, your hard work and dedication has driven our impressive performance. Thank you. Let's clap for our teams. To all our partners, and we have dealers, agents, suppliers, and so on. To all our partners, we appreciate your support and collaboration. Listen to this. To all our mothers in our societies and within our Safaricom family and ecosystem, I wish you all a happy Mother's Day this weekend.
To our mothers, thank you for being the pillar of our society. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us physically here at Michael Joseph Center, and for those joining us online, thank you for your time. Asanteni sana , and now I invite Adil, our Chairman, to give his remarks. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody. I want to do a couple of exercises before I start. I want you to let your hands loose a little bit, and now I want you to practice clapping louder because you guys were not very good before. I know you've had a morning full of numbers. I'm not going to give you too many, but maybe four or five big ones, and I want you to see you clap for those.
Shareholders, representatives of our investors, the board of Safaricom, management and staff of Safaricom PLC, the media, and all those joining us online, guests, ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to be here this morning for the announcement of our results for the year ending 31st March 2025. Before I start, I would like to welcome and introduce four new members to the Safaricom PLC board. I wish to introduce you to Edward Okaro. You will see him online. Rita Kavache, Lawrence Kibet, and James Wambugu, all leaders in their own fields with impeccable credentials. I'm glad that you've joined our board, and I'm looking forward to working with all of you to make our company even more successful than it already is.
I would like all of you to know that together, we are a very strong and high-impact board and that we take our responsibilities very, very seriously, as you've seen. I wish to appreciate and honor Rose Ogega, Winnie Ouko, and Karen Kandie for their outstanding service on the board, and we will miss them, but I wish them success in all that they do. Let me now start by commending Peter, Dilip, and the entire Safaricom team for diligently executing the strategy as approved by the board that has enabled these great numbers. I'm hoping that you'll listen very carefully to what Peter and Dilip had to say, but I'm going to say it slowly, very slowly. Service revenue of nearly $3 billion and total revenue already exceeding $3 billion. Take a note, the currency is not shilling, it's USD. Well done, team.
Congratulations to all Safaricom staff, both in Kenya and Ethiopia. Well done. Your hard work and dedication have enabled these results. This year marked the end of our 2025 vision cycle, which was to transform the organization from a telecommunications company into a strong technology company. On behalf of the board, I'm happy to report that we are satisfied with management's execution of the strategy thus far, and I'll tell you a little bit about our achievements on vision 2025. As you've heard from Peter and Dilip, we successfully achieved the vision that we set out to. Allow me to unpack some of these achievements.
Since launching our 2025 vision in the financial year 2021, we have attained remarkable group revenue growth by 47.8% or 8.1% on a compounded annual growth rate basis from KES 251 billion in 2020 to KES 371 billion in the financial year 2025. That shows you how strong the company is and how quickly it bounced back from the effects of COVID as the companies are still struggling. Isn't it a superb achievement? We have invested heavily during this period with an average group CapEx of KES 73 billion yearly. Investing in network infrastructure has enabled us to increase capacity and improve customer experience. During this period, we supported Kenya as the tech partner of choice in delivering major public sector programs in social protection, health, agriculture, financial inclusion, amongst others.
Our entry into Ethiopia three years ago is bearing fruits with a sustained commercial momentum and network growth covering approximately 50% of the country's population. Most importantly, during this period, as you've heard from Peter, we invested close to KES 20 billion and touched over 13 million people with programs and initiatives across education, health, economic, and environment. Very impactful, right? We have also remained a leading corporate citizen, contributing over KES 678 billion in taxes and annual license fees during the five-year period under review. Not many can even be claimed to be close to these numbers. Ladies and gentlemen, this period was not without its challenges. The board acknowledges the various efforts by management in navigating the tough macroeconomic and regulatory hurdles both in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Specific to the period under review, the board noted, amongst others, the reputational brand erosion, competition threats from traditional and emerging players, and the increased regulatory scrutiny in both markets. The board is happy with the countermeasures employed by management. Well done. Turning our focus now to the next vision cycle that you heard from Peter about, the year under review was also the foundational year of our next vision, which is to be Africa's leading purpose-led technology company by the year 2030. As with previous mandate, we will expect Peter and his team to present a clear and actionable strategy implementation plan every year as we make steps towards achieving this vision. The board is aware of the ever-challenging operating environments and will continue to support management in clearing the hurdles faced along the way. Ladies and gentlemen, you may wonder what these achievements mean to our shareholders.
We remain committed to delivering value to all our shareholders and stakeholders. As you've heard from Peter, the board has proposed a final dividend of KES 0.65 for ordinary share that is going to be approved at this year's annual general meeting in July. As such, the dividend in the financial year 2025 is going to be KES 1.20, which is in line with our dividend policy. It is encouraging that we have maintained the dividend payout despite the startup losses and currency reforms in Ethiopia. Very commendable. It's also impressive to note that as we close on the 2025 vision, our shareholders will have been paid. Listen to these numbers: KES 255 billion in dividends over the last five years. Impressive, right? We anticipate continuing on the same trajectory and to do better as we make strides on achieving our 2030 vision.
I would like to extend my appreciation to my fellow board members for their continued hard work, strategic guidance, and oversight. Their insights and leadership have been instrumental in steering Safaricom through this transformative period and helped management in navigating the challenges. On behalf of the board, I would also like to thank our management team and all the Safaricom staff for their exceptional dedication and hard work, without which we would not have been able to achieve these results. Well done. At Safaricom, we place immense value on the relationships we have with our various stakeholders. The board and management continue to constantly engage constructively with policymakers and regulators to ensure that the organization can meet its obligations and, most importantly, serve our customers diligently. We remain committed to collaborating with the government, regulatory bodies, and all stakeholders to drive positive change and foster sustainable growth.
On behalf of Safaricom PLC, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to both the Kenyan and Ethiopian governments for their strong support. Thank you. The alignment of our strategy with the national visions of these countries was a crucial ingredient to our impressive results this year. The board appreciates the commitment from the two governments to creating an environment that fosters growth and innovation in the telecommunications and technology sectors. The support extended by government has played a pivotal role in enabling Safaricom to achieve these results and being a leading corporate citizen, delivering positive change to the lives of millions. As I conclude, I am proud of what we have been able to achieve.
I want to thank our stakeholders for their support in delivering not just the impressive financial performance, but also enabling us to finish very strongly on the journey that we set out to do so five years ago. The board remains committed to driving positive change, impacting our purpose, and creating value in communities that we operate. Onwards and upwards. Thank you.
Wow, wow, wow. What a Friday morning. What a way to start the day and indeed end the week. Even as we look forward to celebrating Mother's Day, I had to say that, of course. Yeah, so ladies and gentlemen, you've heard it for yourselves. KES 3 billion adds total revenue. That is Safaricom Group results that we are releasing this morning. Yes, we are indeed proud. That brings us now to the end of our full year 2025 results announcement.
We'd like to spend the next 10 or so minutes to do some Q&A, then we can release us for the rest of the day. I'll be calling upon our leaders. Before I do so, can you first give them a hearty clap for those in the room? I hope for you guys in the audience, you can send those claps on the emojis there as I call them back on stage to unpack our results this morning. Allow me to call back on stage our Group CEO, Dr. Peter Ndegwa. Clap for him as he comes up. Our Group CFO, Dilip Pal. By the way, that's prophetic. Dilip Pal. Our CEO, Safaricom Ethiopia, who is in the house, Wim Vanhelleputte, if you could please also join us here on stage. Thank you. Thank you very much.
We'll start with questions in the room so that we give you an opportunity. When you get the mic, please state your name and your organization, then proceed to either state your question or the comment that you have, and then we shall go online. I did see a hand shoot up right there in the middle. Is that you, Bella? If you may please proceed. Check.
Morning. My name is Bella from Bloomberg News. Thank you, Peter, for your good wishes for mothers. Just so you know, it's Mother's Month. Secondly, I wanted to know, you mentioned in the presentation that you're looking at regulatory changes in Ethiopia. I'd like to hear what kind of changes do you expect or do you see? Then finally, given that you're past your investment space in Ethiopia, should there be an expectation for another higher or a higher dividend payout next year or going forward? I'm basically looking at what's the outlook for dividend going forward. Thank you.
Bella, I'm always sure that you'll ask one of the first few questions. Thank you. I'll give the Ethiopia question to Wim. In fact, I was telling Wim most of the questions, I'm sure, will be directed to him. On the guidance, which is a question which belongs to myself, we do not guide on dividends. You have your own financial model. You can figure out what the dividends will be. We do, though, say what our dividend policy is. We pay approximately 80% of our distributable profits every year in dividends. We guide on EBIT.
You know then that the rest should allow you to calculate dividends. I want to clarify that we are not stepping down investment in Ethiopia. We are within the guidance, the medium-term guidance that we have given for peak investment in Ethiopia because you ramp up investment at the beginning and then you tail it so that it actually matches the needs that you have from a site and also technology investment perspective. We are going to be close now to about 4,000 sites, which is scale, and then we will have a more normal investment profile, so to say. Yeah? The other guidance for Ethiopia, the other it's not guidance, but we have always been asked the question about when will we be EBITDA positive. We are still maintaining FY 2027 as the year that will be EBITDA positive for Ethiopia.
With all those things, I'm sure your model will be fine.
All right. Thank you for that, Peter. I will—
Wim will answer the other question in Ethiopia.
Okay. Thank you, Peter. Concerning the remarks Peter made was regulatory changes in Ethiopia, it's more of an evolving process. As you know, last year, 1st of May, the ECA, the Ethiopian Communication Authority, made two important declarations. First declaration was the determination of the MTR with the annual glide path. Now we actually started the second year. We went from ETB 0.23 , now we're down to ETB 0.22, and originally we were at ETB 0.31. That, of course, is a continuous process over the next few years, the continuous glide path downwards. The second declaration, even more important, was the SMP declaration.
Now, what Peter was referring to is that for the moment, the SMP declaration is more of a, would I say, theoretical approach. The actual implementation, both on the retail side and the wholesale side, the concrete measures that go with SMP declaration are still work in progress. Over the next months or years, we do expect that the regulator will enforce certain measures that accompany or that are within the framework of the SMP declaration.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter and Wim. I just want to remind our online audience that you can participate in the Q&A. I do see very few questions, but let us remind you, the Menti code to use this morning is 16795232, and it is now displaying on your screen so that you can also participate in Q&A. Coming back into the room, maybe two more questions before we go online.
Yes. Good morning. Kefa Mwira, the National Media Group. Two questions. I think one is to Dilip. We are seeing the momentum in usage across both the connectivity business. So across voice, mobile data, messaging, the customers are returning. You did mention quite a number of records. I needed to understand what's behind the momentum. These are mostly four-year, five-year highs, so close to pre-pandemic in terms of usage is still going up. The driver for that momentum. For Ethiopia, fast to notice, it's great to see the break-even year retained at FY 2027. My question here would be on M-PESA. It's growing behind. In terms of usage, it's growing behind the connectivity business. You did mention the need for developing use cases for M-PESA. How soon do you feel you'd start on payments and financial services? Basically, how soon can Ethiopia have the same offering for M-PESA as it has in Kenya? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me start with the first one. Thank you, Kefa, for your question. I think, first of all, you must be very happy that we are able to grow that business. I mentioned in my speech that this is a very interesting segment. Globally, if you exclude mobile data within the connectivity, we are seeing a gradual decline. In our case, we have not seen a decline in usage over the long period. It is just not about last year. If you go historically, our usage per customer has actually grown. That was driven by two factors. One, I would say, of course, we have the best network. No question about that. In addition, I would say first is the customer propositions that we are able to do.
First, on the pricing side, we have been optimizing or making sure that the products that we sell are affordable. You see that the prices over the period have come down. There is elasticity that you see prices lower, customers use more. That is clearly an example of that. Secondly, I would like to highlight on, I think Peter mentioned, I mentioned about something that we are very happy about, our ability to do personalized offer based on the investments that we have made in big data and AI. I think all telcos do customer value management proposition, but we have probably taken it to a bit notch higher in the way we know customers' behavior, in the way they will respond. You see headline prices, but you actually could be getting something very personalized to you. That is what is enabling us.
Remember, on the customer side, let's not forget 1 million. There is 1 million new customers, as you can say, 18+ . They are turning one million every year. 1 million. That's not a small number. Combined with all of this, it is what is fueling growth across all the segments. Mobile data just has to be driven by the expansion that you have seen in the 4G+ devices. That is clearly combined with the propositions that we have, enabling the growth across all the segments in connectivity.
Yeah. Kefa, just one addition, and probably you will have seen it from my presentation. We are now also taking the approach to segmentation. Now we have different segments of customers rather than one size fits all, and then targeting those propositions based on segments. Like the youth, we have the Safaricom Hook. The engagement by the youth with those propositions is very significant. With AI and machine learning, we can actually be able to offer those services, to offer propositions that are tailored, as Dilip said. The second aspect, and you'll be seeing it a lot bigger this year. We did not make a lot of noise because it is at a foundational level, but going forward, you'll see it a lot more, what we call integrated offerings. Rather than just buying data, buying voice, buying SMS, buying M-PESA, you'll start to see a lot more. Either make your own bottle and we price it as a composite, or we offer you an integrated offer, yeah, so that you have everything in. When you combine that with segmentation, then we can be able to reflect the needs of different segments by saying, say, probably the youth need more data.
Someone like Nimo, worry-free experience. So buy everything. I mean, this is everything you need for this price. You'll see a lot of that coming through. Therefore, big data and AI is allowing us to do that. The Ethiopia question will be answered very well.
Okay. The strategy for M-PESA in Ethiopia is very simple. We copy with pride all the good things that have been developed in Kenya. In that logic, we are launching the Ethiopian Fuliza next week. We've had great success in the, yes. The overdrafts, we copy-paste a lot of best practice learning. We're going live with overdraft products. Later on, of course, we'll also do term loans. Saving products are also in the pipeline. You know that the use cases in Ethiopia are slightly different.
The main use case or the historical use case of the success of M-PESA is money transfer, domestic money transfer, P2P, I would say. That use case is less dominant in Ethiopia, but we are leapfrogging straight into the payments, into the savings, into the lending space, with, of course, always best practice learning and copy-pasting from here into Ethiopia.
Thank you. Thank you, Kefa, for that question. Thank you, leaders, for those responses. I'll now go online, and I'll start with you, Peter. You know they say the reward for good work is more work. There is a question here. Is Safaricom planning to expand to other larger economies such as Nigeria?
I would like to know the name of the person who has asked that question. I'll ask him to come and work for us. Luckily, I worked in West Africa, so I know the countries. I think the most serious answer to that question, Chairman and myself, we talked about the next phase of our strategy. Clearly, we need to make sure that Ethiopia works first before we move to another big operation. There's still a lot of growth that we are seeing in Kenya. Ethiopia, we are just past the peak funding. There's a lot of work to be done. Wim still has, he tells me that he still has the milk bottle. One of these days, he'll bring back that milk bottle when he doesn't need any more money from me. I think for the big operations, we want to fund Ethiopia first. Once we are satisfied with that, we can think about the next big thing. That said, we're investing in many other areas. The enterprise side requires a lot of investment.
The public sector side requires a lot of investment. The fixed side, the broadband side requires a lot of investment. There is still a lot of heavy lifting, even in our existing market. The financial services side in insurance, in wealth, in all these areas requires a lot of investment. That is why you see the CapEx continue to be very significant. We are also looking, as we turn into a technology company, at what opportunities we have for M&A and partners that can help us actually to fast-track our development into a more solutions-based organization.
Thank you. Thank you, Peter, for that. I will move over to you, Dilip. This is about capital in Ethiopia. Do you have to put in new, did you have to put in new capital into Ethiopia in FY 2025, or was this already committed or new money due to the evolving situation there? Do you see the need to put in more new capital in FY 2026, Dilip?
Yeah. If you have seen the slide, there is a slide that I have presented on Ethiopia funding. I mentioned about the total funding went up by $410 million from $1,860 million to $2,270 million. Part of that $410 million, about $107 million, is the payments that we have made for the deferred vendor payables. There is a line, if you have seen there, which has gone down from $301 million to $194 million, representing a decline of $107 million. $410 million, out of which, of course, this was committed before, $107 million went, and $300 million is the balance amount that has gone into the business in total, out of which you do broadly, our share was about $150 million. Yes, till FY 2025, whatever money which has gone into it, still within the commitment that we have made. I also mentioned about it's an evolving scenario. We keep monitoring the progress, and especially on the funding side in Ethiopia. Of course, we do not guide on the funding side, but it is, as you can see, and we did mention before, majority of the funding has already happened. We are, I think, at the last tail leg of the tail end of the funding that will be required to make sure that the business is well funded to get to the next level of scale. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Dilip. Before I come back to those in the room for one last final question in the interest of time, this question goes to you, Wim. Impressive performance for Ethiopia. The question is, what really drove the customer acceleration in the second half?
Of course, the right answer is to say that the team did an amazing job, which they actually did, because it is all about execution, okay? The acquisition strategy that we have developed, and I think we spoke about that a lot in Mombasa at the investor conference, is that we have ruthless execution when it comes to subscriber acquisition. We have, on a daily basis, 3,500-4,000 unique brand ambassadors that sell SIM cards. We follow it up on a daily basis. Every site needs to have at least one brand ambassador selling at least four SIM cards on a daily basis, every day, every site.
That has really driven that increase in gross acquisitions, which, of course, has translated into the net acquisitions, into the 90-day subscriber growth. It is, I would say, military rootless execution of selling SIM cards every day, everywhere where we have our 3,000 sites. If we continue doing that from 3,000 sites to 4,000 sites in the next 6-12 months, you see we continue growing. We are very confident that we will keep growing also our subscriber base, which is the foundation of any revenue growth, is first of all subscriber growth.
Thank you. Thank you, Wim, for that response. Looking back to the room, one last question before I take my last one online. Going once, I don't see any hand. The online guys have it. This is to you, Peter Daktari. The person has identified themselves. Dominic, thank you, Dominic, for your question. Daktari Peter, what has been the most challenging experience as you're pioneering the group towards such an amazing performance? It's a good question to close us with.
What has been the most challenging?
Most challenging.
I thought Dominic would first congratulate us for the fantastic performance. Anyway, I think two things I would say. If you listened to the Chairman and you walked through 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, we've gone through COVID. We've navigated our way through COVID. That allowed our business to accelerate. We didn't see that as a challenge. We actually saw it as an opportunity to deepen usage of digital. We went into Ethiopia.
We got the license in the middle of COVID. We were confident enough to actually get and partner with other stakeholders and shareholders to go into Ethiopia. Of course, this country, we've had challenges last year, the Gen Z protests and all these elements. We are a big national brand that allows that any conversation means that our brand will be present because of the services that we offer. I would say out of all those, whether that is managing all the elements in Ethiopia, managing crises like COVID, or managing last year's event, I would say the most recent has been the biggest challenge. That is why we want to recommit to always offer an always on, reliable, always on, safe, secure.
That is also one of the reasons why we keep investing in a lot of the technology to make sure our customers continue to trust us. We are the most trusted brand. We are the biggest supporter of Kenyan passion points. We are the biggest spender in terms of community investment. For the services we offer, both on the financial side and also connectivity side, we deliver real change in people's lives every day. We want to continue to do that.
Thank you. Thank you. That is the time we had for Q&A. I see a few more questions online. I know for those in the room, we will be able to engage with us as we go along. Oh, yes. I have a challenge here to you, Chairman. What have been your challenges leading this great group into this amazing performance? I am using Dominic's words.
I think it's been the dress code, getting Wim to wear the right tie. No, actually, it's been amazing. We have a very good team of people led by Peter. We have a very good executive team. It's just to harness and get the best out of them. So it's not been a challenge. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. A very high note with which to close our session this morning. It's been wonderful. Thank you for your engagement. Thank you for your questions. As I was saying, we will keep interacting. You'll get various platforms to be able to have these questions responded to, because this is just the beginning of the engagement now that you have the results. I'm also here to confirm to you that the result materials have already been uploaded on our website. Feel free to get in there, download, and engage as we have these conversations ongoing.
Once again, we appreciate you for taking the time. I've been your moderator, Caroline Wambugu. I can only say, have a blessed day, stay safe, and let us stay connected. Thank you. Thank you very much.