By Duncan Miriri
NAIROBI, July 19 (Reuters) - Kenya's biggest telecomsoperator, Safaricom, has extended the contract of itschief executive officer Bob Collymore by two years, the CEO toldReuters on Friday.
Profits have risen under Collymore, whose initial contractof three years was due to expire at the end of August.
Pre-tax profit increased from 20.97 billion shillings($240.62 million) in the year ended March 2010 before he tookover to 25.5 billion shillings in the last financial year,despite a price war that lasted between August 2010 to September2011.
"The board recognised that this is still work in progressand we still have much that can be done. We are giving ourselvesmore time to work out our succession plan," Collymore said.
Contracts for the entire executive team, including the chieftechnology officer and the chief financial officer will beexpiring over the next 18-24 months, he said.
"We will be in the process of identifying people who will betaking over internally," he added.
Collymore, who joined the firm that is 40-percent owned byBritain's Vodafone from South Africa's Vodacom,steered Safaricom through a bruising price war initiated by theKenyan unit of Bharti Airtel in August 2010.
Safaricom's 39.6 percent margin on earnings before interest,tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for its lastfinancial year, is near the top of the range for telecomsglobally.
Its shares have surged 46 percent this year to 7.30shillings each, outpacing the benchmark NSE-20 share index year to date gains of 16 percent by far.