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By George Obulutsa
NAIROBI, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Kenya's Safaricom saidon Friday that earnings before interest, tax, depreciation andamortization (EBITDA) for the first half of the year are up 30.8percent on the same time last year, at 50.8 billion shillings($502 million).
The company's net income in the same period was 23.9 billionshillings, Chief Financial Officer Sateesh Kamath told aninvestor briefing.
Revenue from its mobile money service, known as M-Pesa, rose33.7 percent to 25.9 billion shillings from 19.35 billionshillings a year earlier.
The figures for the telecom company, which is 40 percentowned by Britain's Vodafone and has Kenya's biggestsubscriber base, cover the period from April 1 to Sept. 30.
The company is also increasing its guidance for the fullyear's EBITDA to between 94 billion to 97 billion shillings,said Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore.
The guidance for the year to end in March 2017 hadpreviously been between 89 billion and 92 billion shillings.
($1 = 101.2000 Kenyan shillings) (Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Katharine Houreld andSimon Cameron-Moore)
