Zambia: Zain Zambia boosts full-year profit, subscribers
Zain Zambia, a unit of Kuwaiti telecoms firm Zain, posted an 8 percent rise in profit before tax for the year to end-December as its subscriber base grew by more than 15 percent.
Zambia’s largest mobile service provider and one of Africa’s fastest-growing mobile companies said on Tuesday profit before tax rose to 416 billion Zambian kwacha as at December last year, compared with 386 billion kwacha in 2008.
Zain Zambia, whose current market share is about 70 percent, compared with rival MTN Zambia’s 27 percent and and state-run Cell-Z’s 3 percent, recorded a pre-tax profit of 342 billion kwacha in 2007, finance director Andrew Jones told Reuters.
Jones said Zain Zambia’s subscribers had increased to 3.076 million in December 2009, compared with 2.669 million in the same month in 2008 and 700,000 in 2005.
The company’s revenue rose to 1.38 trillion kwacha last year from 1.22 trillion kwacha recorded in 2008.
“The outlook for our business in 2010 … is more positive although we must remain cautious,” said David Holliday, Zain Zambia’s managing director.
Holliday added that the group was planning to launch its own international voice service and 3G network, which has video link for mobile phone users, during the first half of 2010.
Zain had started tests on 3G transmission technology and would roll the service out as soon as the communications authority granted it permission, Holliday said.
“These should provide potentially significant upsides to both revenue and profitability,” he said.
Holliday added Zain Zambia would also introduce other strategic initiatives to increase revenue and reduce costs.
Zain Zambia, which competes with rivals Cell-Z, a subsidiary of state-owned Zamtel and MTN Zambia, a unit of Africa’s biggest listed telecom firm, MTN (MTNJ.J) of South Africa, has spent $500 million on improving its network since its inception in 1998.
India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd is in talks to buy most of the African assets of Kuwaiti telecoms group Zain for $9 billion.
[Reuters South Africa]
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All what you talk about is profit profit profit…………, and yet you have poor services.
May i just be honest with you Zain Zambia, you are expensive and your services are poor it is just that you have marketed yourself so well.
otherwise if cell z had the same marketing strategy like you, you would have maybe half of the customers that you have.
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Such phenomenal profits simply go to prove that the Zambian public is being over-cahrged. Zain air time fees in Zambia are probably among the most expensive in the world. It’s immoral to be making such ridiculous profits over poverty-stricken Zambians.
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