Ethio Telecom Reports 61.3bln Birr Annual Revenue

ADDIS ABABA – State-run Ethio Telecom’s annual revenue rose by 8.5 percent to 61.3 billion Birr in the 2021/22 fiscal year that ended on June 7, its CEO announced on Thursday.

In a press briefing today, CEO Frehiwot Tamiru the company was able to attain 87.6% of the revenue target set for the budget year.

“This achievement is remarkable,” said Frehiwot, given the impact of security-related challenges in the country which resulted in service outages in 3,473 sites in the year.

However, the CEO said the revenue showed an 8.5% jump year over year while the subscribers number grew by 18.4% to 66.59 million.

The telco has attributed the increases to network and system expansion as well as optimization works.

The 4G service, which started in Addis Ababa, has now reached 136 cities while 67 new products and services such as a pre-commercial 5G service rollout in the capital, were launched in the year, says the telco’s performance report.

The report says the mobile voice service to 64.5m subscribers generated a 51% share of Ethio telecom’s 61.3 billion Birr total revenue.

Data and internet service also contributed 27% of the revenue, said the company which has 26.1 million subscribers. The remaining came from international business (10%), value-added services (5.7%), and other services (6.6%).

Ethio telecom’s Mobile Money platform, ‘Telebirr’ has shown “tremendous” growth since its launch in May 2021 as “tremendous”.

Frehiwot said 21.8 Million customers had signed up to use Telebirr, making a total transaction value of 30.3 billion Birr.

Moreover, a total of 974, 300 US dollars was remitted through the international remittance service partnering with 37 counties within the last six months.

The state-owned telco, which was a subject of a partial privatization bid, started the year with the implementation of a new three-year growth strategy to make itself ready for eventual competition in the sector.

Several foreign investors were seeking to acquire a stake in Ethio Telecom after the government proposed to sell its 40% share of the company last year. Sector regulators, however, decided to halt the bidding process in March in order to take “time to accommodate the improved macroeconomic situations” both nationally and globally.

The regulators already awarded an operating license to a consortium led by Kenya’s Safaricom, Vodafone, and Japan’s Sumitomo. The group paid $850 million for the license and their company, Safaricom Ethiopia, is expected to compete with Ethio Telecom when it starts commercial service in August.