Safaricom has commenced its final dividend payment of Sh0.65 per share five days ahead of the payment date on August 31, continuing its practice of making early payments of its dividends to shareholders.
Individual investors started receiving their payments through the M-Pesa mobile platform earlier this week, with the company now making all such distributions through electronic platforms, after ditching the use of cheques to pay dividends earlier this year.
Safaricom had earlier said that dividend cheques were taking time to reach shareholders – effectively delaying the enjoyment of their entitlements – hence the decision to ask them to opt for more efficient payment methods such as electronic funds transfer (EFT), real-time gross settlement (RTGS) or M-Pesa.
The company is also among the few companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange that pays its dividends before the stipulated payment date, with the majority adhering to the actual printed payment date.
For example, Safaricom in September 2019 paid a total dividend of Sh74.9 billion more than two and a half months ahead of the scheduled payment date of November 30 that year.
Safaricom will pay a total of Sh26.04 billion in the latest round of dividends, having already handed over Sh22.04 billion to shareholders on March 31, 2024 at a rate of Sh0.55 per share. The dividend will be for the year ending March 2024.
The Company had 535,806 shareholders on its books as of the end of March 2024, of whom 95.8 percent or 513,387 were retail shareholders who owned less than 10,000 shares each.
However, these shareholders own only 1.68% of the company, equivalent to 670.8 million shares. The majority of the company’s shares are owned by the Government of Kenya (35%) and multinationals Vodafone Group PLC and Vodacom Group Limited (40%).
The government is set to receive Sh9.11 billion in the final dividend, having already received Sh7.71 billion via interim dividend in March from 14.02 billion Safaricom shares.
For Vodafone and Vodacom, their 16 billion shares entitle them to a total payment of Sh10.4 billion via final dividends. They received Sh8.8 billion in interim dividends earlier.
Overall, Safaricom’s total dividend payment amounted to Sh48.08 billion for the 2024 financial year, representing 76.3 percent of the company’s net profit of Sh62.99 billion for the year.
The company kept its dividend unchanged year-on-year, reflecting a marginal increase in net profit after its share of losses from its recently established Ethiopian subsidiary weighed on growth in the Kenyan unit.
Safaricom owns 51.67 percent of the Ethiopian unit, which means that the share of losses recorded in its financial report amounted to 21.7 billion shillings.
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