Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa spoke to Bloomberg's Jennifer Zabasajja about the company's reorganization plans.

Nairobi

Safaricom's CEO addressed recent speculation about the possible splitting of the company, following comments from Kenya's finance minister about government ambitions to privatize or restructure state assets. The CEO clarified that while there has been ongoing public discussion about separating M-Pesa from Safaricom, the board has not been involved in any formal talks on this matter.

He stressed that Safaricom's success is partly due to the integration of its telecommunications and financial services, and that any restructuring would be a board-led process. The CEO also noted that M-Pesa already operates separately from the GSM business and that investors are well aware of its distinct role. The government, which owns a significant stake in Safaricom, may consider asset sales as part of broader budgetary measures, but no immediate changes are planned for Safaricom.

Safaricom CEO sees no risk in spin off

I wanted to start here, though, because we recently spoke to the finance minister in Kenya. And he talked about Safaricom and maybe some of the ambitions for the government as far as splitting Safaricom. What is your comment on that? What have been the discussions? Where are we at right now? So yeah, so Jennifer, it's fantastic to be here once again at the UNGA this week. It's always great to come and meet various people that are involved here. In terms of Safaricom, as you know, Safaricom has been the most successful privatization by the Kenya government. And it's fantastic to see the government intending to privatize other companies, including Kenya Pipeline. So there has always been talk about whether Safaricom should be split from M-Pesa or M-Pesa should be split from Safaricom. From a management perspective and from a board perspective, we've always said the reason why Safaricom has been successful is because the two are joined. We deliver real financial inclusion through M-Pesa, but that relies on a connectivity layer that is actually very important. And we continue to drive that. In terms of this conversation that are happening by government, the government made a very general statement about how it wants to finance its physical budget. And part of that included either scaling back or selling some of their assets. We are not involved in that. The board has not actually been engaged in any way on that. So it is the government dealing with that. And I don't think I want to comment about what the government wants to do in that respect. Well, there would have to be discussions, right? Because they did talk about potentially not just splitting it up into two, but it would be potentially three different parts. Do you see any potential benefits or risks, as you were saying, potentially with this, if it actually does go through? No, so remember that if the Safaricom was doing any restructuring, that would be led by the Safaricom board. So that's why I said there has always been a conversation about splitting M-Pesa from Safaricom. But from a Safaricom perspective, we intend that over in the future, we will have businesses that are more focused on specific parts of the business, like at our company, that allows us to optimize the assets that we have on the network side. So that's actually going to be beneficial. But M-Pesa today is actually operated completely separately from the GSM business. And our investor, which, as you know, Safaricom is listed, are very clear and actually understand M-Pesa as a business. So if in the future there was any conversation about reorganization of Safaricom, it would be led by the board. So I actually do not see in the foreseeable future the aspect of splitting Safaricom being part of our conversation. The government, though, does have an opportunity. They own about 30% from my understanding. 35%. 35%. So they do have a say. They do have a significant stake. That is correct. And I'm not saying they don't. Remember that what I said is the minister announced, as part of the budget process, that there may be a need for them to raise more money to be able to balance the budget, of which part of that could be considering listing some assets which are not listed, or doing other reorganization. That's for them to determine. That's not a Safaricom conversation.

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Breakdown