NAIROBI, August 18 – AccessKenya Group, Kenya\’s first publicly listed ICT company, Monday announced its results for the half year ending June 2008 with revenue and profit growth exceeding its forecast range of 60 percent.
Revenues for the six months ending June 2008 were Sh682 million – a 76 percent increase on the Sh387 million achieved in the same period in 2007.
Profit after tax before extraordinary items rose by 62 percent to Sh104 million from Sh64 million achieved in the same period in 2007.
"We are delighted to announce that revenues and profits for the half year ending June 2008 have strongly exceeded our original target growth rate of 50 – 60 percent," commented Jonathan Somen, Group Managing Director.
"The core corporate internet business has powered through the months of political upheaval and delivered strong growth in customer numbers, Average Revenue Per User and net profit, all at the same time as delivering ever increasing levels of speed and value for money to our customers."
He said they were purchasing over 300mb of international capacity.
"This makes us the largest buyer of international capacity in Kenya. While this capacity is highly utilised by day, it is far less used at night and this excess night capacity will form the "backbone" of guaranteed high speeds for our home broadband customers who are already being installed on our $3.5 million Alvarion Wi-Max network with 35 base stations around Nairobi and Mombasa," he said.
Somen said they expect to see significant traction in the sales of Access at home in the second half of this year as residential customers enjoy levels of high and guaranteed speed and reliability backed up by corporate style customer service not seen before in Kenya.
"The Group is strongly focused on the growth of Access @ Home, our core Broadband Max 2 service and Outsource IT and believe we are very well positioned for further strong results in the second half of 2008," concluded Somen.
The AccessKenya Group comprises AccessKenya, Kenya\’s Corporate ISP, Broadband Access (BLUE), one of Kenya\’s largest Data Carrier Network Operators (DCNO), and now Openview Business Systems, one of Kenya\’s IT services providers.
The Group currently has over 2200 corporate leased lines across Kenya and has offices in Nairobi and Mombasa with representation in Kisumu, Eldoret, Nakuru and Nyeri.
