Safaricom of Kenya shares advance on outlook, tax break

Safaricom Ltd., Kenya’s biggest company by market value, climbed 2.7 percent as it bought a business to capitalize on the demand for high-speed internet expectations of a forthcoming tax concession.

The company’s shares rose 0.1 shillings to 3.85 shillings, at 10:00 a.m. in Nairobi.

The company said Aug. 13 it had agreed to buy 100 percent of Packet Stream Data Networks Ltd. for an undisclosed amount.

“They are ahead of the curve in the data market,” Aly Khan Satchu, a Nairobi-based independent stock market analyst said in a phone interview. “They are repositioning themselves in the data space.”

The company will also get a tax concession in the current financial year, an incentive for becoming publicly traded on March 28 last year, Satchu said.

Safaricom holds its first shareholders’ meeting as a publicly traded company tomorrow.

Source: Bloomberg