* Set to launch home TV, broadband services
* EBITDA up 17 percent to 71.2 bln shillings (Adds details, background)
By George Obulutsa
NAIROBI, May 7 (Reuters) - Kenya's Safaricom Ltd plans to expand its mobile and fibre optic network and willlaunch a home broadband service to boost growth after posting a17 percent rise in annual earnings.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation(EBITDA) rose to 71.2 billion shillings ($748.7 million) in theyear ended March, lifted by a 13 percent rise in revenue to163.4 billion shillings.
Safaricom, whose capital expenditure rose 21 percent to 33.7billion shillings, plans to expand its 3G network to cover 80percent of the population from 69 percent at present.
It also plans to roll out faster 4G services to 13 moretowns by December from two currently, and add fibre opticconnections to 10 more towns.
"We are continuing just to roll out our standard network,continuing to update the network, continuing to roll fibre out.So it's kind of largely business as usual," Chief Executive BobCollymore told reporters on Thursday.
Collymore, whose term as chief executive was extended fortwo years, said Safaricom would launch set-top boxes which willreceive TV and data services using 4G on Friday.
"Effectively it gives you broadband access in the home," hesaid.
Safaricom said full-year net income, which jumped 38 percentto 31.87 billion shillings, was likely to be 32-34 billion thisfinancial year.
The company, 40 percent owned by Britain's Vodafone GroupPLC, expects free cashflow of 25-26 billion shillingsfrom 27.5 billion last financial year.
Its voice service revenue rose 4 percent to 87.4 billionshillings, while that from money transfer service M-Pesa was up23 percent to 32.6 billion.
Mobile data services revenue was up 59 percent to 14.82billion shillings and that from short message services jumped 15percent to 15.6 billion.
It said earnings per share rose to 0.80 shillings from 0.57shillings and proposed a dividend per share of 0.64 shillings,up from 0.47 shillings.
At 0939 GMT, Safaricom's shares were down 2 percent at 17.20shillings on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Daniel Kuyoh, research analyst at Kingdom Securities, saidthe drop was due to profit taking by some investors, who hadalready priced a better full-year performance.
"A lot of investors that we are seeing are simply offloading... The results coming out today have probably strengthened alot of investors, those are the speculators (taking profit)," hesaid.
($1 = 95.1000 Kenyan shillings) (Editing by Mark Potter)
Vodafone (VOD)
