Kenyan telecoms company Safaricom reported a 55% rise in its half-year profit on Thursday, helped by a smaller loss in key expansion market Ethiopia.

Safaricom posted a group operating profit of 65.2 billion Kenyan shillings ($505.62 million) in the six months to the end of September and maintained its full-year guidance.

Steady growth in its Kenya business continued to be the main profit driver, while its reported loss in Ethiopia dropped by 59% compared to the first half of the previous financial year, which was heavily impacted by a depreciation of the birr currency.

Safaricom launched in Ethiopia in 2022 as the government there opened up the tightly-controlled economy to foreign competition and is hoping its presence in Africa's second most populous country will power future growth.

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The telecoms firm is partly owned by South Africa's Vodacom and Britain's Vodafone.

Group service revenue rose to Ksh.199.9 billion in the six months to end-September, from Ksh.179.9 billion in the same period a year earlier, it said on Thursday.

Revenue from mobile financial service M-Pesa rose to 88.1 billion shillings from 77.2 billion shillings previously.