Safaricom FY26 Preview : What Analysts Think...

Good evening. It’s Brian from The Kenyan Wall Street. In today’s newsletter, financial analysts weigh and predict how Kenya’s largest telco Safaricom will perform ahead of Thursday's FY2025 results.

Also, mobile money has become a favorite revenue mine for governments under fiscal pressure…but there is a cost.

These and more stories…

Safaricom FY26 Preview : What Analysts Think…

By Harry Njuguna

At Safaricom, the long Ethiopia investment cycle is beginning to turn from drag to leverage, and a survey of analysts by The Kenyan Wall Street points to FY26 as a breakout year. Net income is projected to rise roughly 23% with revenues crossing the KSh 420 billion mark, anchored by a steady Kenyan core and a narrowing loss profile in Ethiopia.

The centre of gravity remains M-Pesa, whose double-digit growth continues to reshape the revenue mix, now accounting for over 40% of the business and underwriting margin recovery. That recovery, however, is where conviction diverges: forecasts for EBITDA margins span a wide range, reflecting uncertainty over how quickly Ethiopia can move from scale to profitability.

Still, earnings before interest and tax are expected to reach new highs, closing a multi-year cycle of heavy capital expenditure and subdued returns. With free cash flow rebounding sharply, the more immediate signal to investors may come through dividends, where a long-frozen payout is widely expected to reset upward.

Read the full analysis here >>>>>

SACCO Borrowers Still Have Better Repayment Habits

By Brian Nzomo

Kenya’s SACCO sector has long run on a simple promise: steady lending anchored to steady pay. That logic still holds on the surface, with bad loans at 8.39% even as the loan book expands past KSh 845 billion, quietly setting the sector apart from riskier lenders such as banks. 

But the picture fractures on closer look, with agriculture SACCOs straining under elevated defaults, others holding firm, and billions in delayed public-sector remittances rippling through balance sheets that otherwise appear sound. Employment-linked lending, once the sector’s great stabilizer, now doubles as its point of exposure.

What looks like resilience is a system less tested by borrowers than by the reliability of the institutions meant to pay them. 

Read the article here >>>>>

Why Taxing Mobile Money Is Backfiring Across Africa

Across Africa, mobile money has grown from a convenience into critical infrastructure, expanding the formal economy through millions of small, everyday transactions. Governments, under mounting fiscal pressure, are now turning to that visibility as a source of revenue, imposing levies at the point of use in the hope of capturing a share of the flow.

The pattern that follows is increasingly familiar: costs rise, users adjust, and transaction volumes begin to thin, often faster than policymakers anticipate. Evidence from markets such as Ghana shows how quickly expected gains can erode, as usage declines and projected revenues fall short, forcing revisions or reversals.

What appears to be a straightforward tax measure instead alters behavior at the margins, where mobile money derives its strength; in frequent, low-value transactions that are highly sensitive to cost. Over time, this shifts activity back toward cash, reducing both financial inclusion and the visibility that made the system attractive to tax in the first place.

Read the article here >>>>>

Heads Up

What You Should Watch!

What if your deepest struggles… became your life’s work? In this episode of Her Leadership with Vanessa Diane, we sit down with Professor Catherine Gachutha, founder of KIBCO, to explore a powerful story of resilience, purpose, and impact.

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