Bob Collymore, the CEO of Safaricom, has revealed that the telco is looking at new avenues to drive income growth.
Safaricom is the most profitable listed company at the NSE. In the last financial year, its net earnings amounted to Ksh55 billion, way above other listed companies’ earnings.
In an interview he expressed optimism about the Airtel – Telkom merger saying, “Telecom operators need to get a certain critical mass to work…. So this will create a player with 33 percent marketshare. That makes sense. For the market it makes sense, too, to have a stronger player as competition to Safaricom.”
According to Mr Collymore, he does not expect competition from the Airtel – Telkom merger, real competition will come from ‘the big tech firms’, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and the Chinese firm Tencent.
In response to the competition from the world tech leaders, the CEO said that Safaricom is constantly evolving. “We don’t get complacent about these things, we believe we need to evolve, and quickly. The thing that we have today was designed 11 years ago.”
Safaricom’s strategic partnership with South Africa’s Vodacom will help the company in its data analytics business. In 2017, Vodacom bought 35 percent ownership of Safaricom shares from the UK based telco Vodafone.
Safaricom’s CEO is set to retire from his position in August 2019 after nine years of service in the role. The executive hopes that his successor will have an eye for mergers and a deep understanding of the financial sector to steer the company to greater success.
