Safaricom generated KShs 107.9 billion in cash from running its business last year — but a lot of that cash was already spoken for before it ever reached a shareholder. Today you'll find out how much was actually left over.
In the last lesson, you saw that Safaricom's net cash generated from operating activities (KShs 107,923.6 million in FY2024) was much higher than its profit for the year (KShs 42,658.4 million) — a reassuring sign that the profit is backed by real cash, not just accounting entries.
But operating cash isn't free to spend however the company likes. A telecom business has to keep buying towers, fibre, network equipment, and licences just to keep running — let alone grow. That spending is called capital expenditure, or capex for short: cash spent on long-lived assets like property, equipment, and intangible assets (the same items you saw depreciating and amortising back in Lesson 1).
Free cash flow (FCF) answers a sharper question than "did operations generate cash?" It asks: after paying for the equipment needed to keep the business running, how much cash is genuinely left over — free to pay down debt, pay dividends, or reinvest in new ventures?
Free cash flow = Net cash from operating activities − Capital expenditure.
That's it. No adjustments for tax rates or financing structure — just "cash the business generated" minus "cash it had to spend to stay in business."
Capex shows up in the investing activities section of the cash flow statement, as cash actually paid out for long-term assets. Safaricom reports two lines that count as capex:
| KShs millions | FY2024 | FY2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Net cash generated from operating activities | 107,923.6 | 116,151.1 |
| Purchase of property and equipment | (66,636.1) | (66,331.2) |
| Acquisition of intangible assets | (30,992.5) | (5,143.0) |
Source: Safaricom PLC Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024 (figures simplified/grouped for this lesson; audited, currency KShs millions).
Add those two capex lines together and you get Safaricom's total capital spending for FY2024:
66,636.1 + 30,992.5 = 97,628.6 (KShs millions) spent on property, equipment, and intangible assets in FY2024.
Now subtract that capex figure from operating cash flow:
| KShs millions | FY2024 |
|---|---|
| Net cash generated from operating activities | 107,923.6 |
| Less: total capex (property, equipment & intangibles) | (97,628.6) |
| Free cash flow | ≈ 10,295.0 |
Source: figures derived from Safaricom PLC Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024 (arithmetic shown above; not a line item Safaricom reports directly).
Out of KShs 107.9 billion in operating cash, roughly KShs 10.3 billion was left over once capex was paid — about 9.5% of the operating cash flow. The other 90%-plus went straight back into towers, fibre, and equipment.
A thin free cash flow doesn't automatically mean a company is in trouble. Telecoms are capital intensive — they have to keep spending heavily on infrastructure just to maintain and grow the network, especially while expanding into a new market like Safaricom's Ethiopia operation. Heavy reinvestment can be a sign of a company investing in its future.
But it does mean something concrete for a shareholder: most of the cash the business generates this year isn't available for dividends, debt repayment, or anything else — it's already committed to keeping the lights on and the network growing. When you compare this to a less capital-intensive business later in the course, the contrast will be clear.
Next lesson, we'll leave Safaricom for a moment and meet Equity Group Holdings — a bank, where the whole shape of the financial statements looks different: no inventory, deposits count as a liability, and loans count as an asset.
Primary source for this lesson's numbers: Safaricom PLC Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024.
Something unclear, or want to dig into a line item we skipped (like "why is acquiring intangible assets counted as capex")? Ask your teacher — that's what these sessions are for.