NAIROBI, – Kenya Power Co said on Friday full-year pretax profit plunged 60 percent to 3.09 billion shillings ($30.23 million) as rising costs linked to its growing transmission and distribution network offset modest electricity sales.
The country’s sole power distributor said total revenue rose to 125.85 billion shillings from 120.74 billion shillings in the year ended June, helped by a 4 percent growth in electricity sales of 95.46 billion shillings.
Transmission and distribution costs rose 14 percent to 39.63 billion shillings, the power company said.
The company restated its pretax profit for the year ended June 2017 at 7.66 billion shillings from the previously reported 10.91 billion shillings, and said its financial costs jumped by a third to 7.81 billion shillings.
In July, a Kenyan court charged the Kenya Power Chief Executive Ken Tarus, his predecessor, Ben Chumo and other senior managers at the company with conspiring to commit an economic crime and abuse of office.
They deny all the charges.
Kenya Power, which has over 6.2 million customers connected to its grid, says it gets about 60 percent of revenue from industrial consumers in Nairobi and the neighbouring town of Thika.
By Reuters
