Safaricom has started distributing its final dividend of Sh0.65 per share five days ahead of the payment date of August 31, continuing its practice of making early payments of its distributions to shareholders.
Retail investors started receiving their payouts through the M-Pesa mobile platform early in the week, with the company now making all such distributions through electronic platforms, having ditched the use of cheques to pay dividends earlier this year.
Safaricom previously said that dividend cheques took a while before getting to shareholders —effectively delaying the enjoyment of their dues— hence the decision to ask them to choose more efficient modes of payment such as electronic funds transfer (EFT), real-time gross settlement (RTGS), or M-Pesa.
The company is also among a few Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firms that pay their dividends earlier than the stated payment date, with the majority sticking to the actual printed date of payment.
In September 2019 for instance, Safaricom paid a gross dividend amounting to Sh74.9 billion more than two-and-a-half months earlier than the scheduled payment date of November 30 that year.
Safaricom is paying a total of Sh26.04 billion in the latest round of distribution, having already handed shareholders Sh22.04 billion on March 31, 2024 at a rate of Sh0.55 per share. The dividends are for the year ending March 2024.
The company had 535,806 shareholders on its books by the end of March 2024, out of which 95.8 percent or 513,387 were retail owners holding less than 10,000 shares each.
These shareholders, however, own just 1.68 percent of the company, equivalent to 670.8 million shares. The bulk of the company’s shares are held by the government of Kenya (35 percent) and multinationals Vodafone Group Plc and Vodacom Group Limited (40 percent).
The government is in line for a payout of Sh9.11 billion in the final distribution, having already banked Sh7.71 billion via the interim dividend in March from its 14.02 billion Safaricom shares.
For Vodafone and Vodacom, their 16 billion shares entitle them to a gross payment of Sh10.4 billion via the final dividend. They were paid Sh8.8 billion in interim dividend earlier.
Overall, Safaricom’s total dividend payout of Sh48.08 billion for the 2024 financial year amounted to 76.3 percent of the company’s net profit of Sh62.99 billion for the year.
The company kept the dividend payout unchanged year-on-year, reflecting the marginal increase in net profit after its share of losses from its recently established Ethiopian subsidiary weighed down growth in the Kenyan unit.
Safaricom owns 51.67 percent of the Ethiopia unit, meaning that the share of the losses booked on its financial report stood at Sh21.7 billion.
