Vodacom lifts quarterly revenue by 10.5%
Vodacom shrugged off new call termination rates (CTRs) by announcing a 10.5% rise in group revenue to R20.2 billion for the quarter ended December 2013.
Shares in the operator soared R3.46%, or R4 to R119.75 in trade on the JSE on Tuesday (5 February).
Group active customers grew 12.3% to 56.0 million, and active data customers grew 27.9% to 23.7 million.
The operator said that group service revenue increased 6.4% to R16.248 billion, while group data revenue increased 40.7% to R3.611 billion, representing 22.2% of service revenue.
South Africa
Total revenue grew by 6.6% to R16.5 billion in the quarter, boosted by a 26.9% growth in equipment revenue, contributing 21.6% of revenue from 18.1% a year ago.
Service revenue improved marginally, by 0.6% to R12.6 billion, due to strong growth in data and prepaid customer revenue, Vodacom said.
Excluding the effect of lower mobile termination rates (MTRs) which led to a 24.1% decline in interconnection revenue, service revenue grew by 3.4%.
During the period, Vodacom said it added 600,000 smartphones with 7.2 million units now active on its network.
The average monthly data usage per smartphone grew by 83.5% to 254 MB per month, the group said.
Prepaid mobile customer revenue increased by 6.8% to R5.444 billion. Active prepaid customers increased by 5.7%, minutes of use grew by 21.5% and ARPU was flat at R80.
“Our strategy of giving more value to customers has allowed us to achieve a 25.3% reduction in the effective prepaid price per minute to 56 cents,” Vodacom said.
Contract mobile customer revenue declined a fraction, by 0.1% to R5.336 billion. Active contract customers grew 1.7% to 4.8 million, with ARPU declining 3.9% in the quarter to R393.
Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO said: “We continue to gain ground commercially with a 12.3% increase in Group customers to 56.0 million and 3.4% underlying growth in group service revenue driven by data revenue growth of 40.7%.
“This quarter highlights once again that our strategy of sustained network investment is key to allow us to grow our overall business while still driving down the cost to communicate.”
Internationally speaking, Joosub said: “Data revenue more than doubled with data traffic now three times higher than a year ago. We are also achieving strong uptake of M-Pesa services. The international businesses continue to make an increasingly significant contribution to the group.”
Shameel Joosub
International
Service revenue grew 32.6% to R3.695 billion supported by 22.8% growth in active customers to 25.0 million mainly due to the success of our street vendor channel, expanded network coverage and competitive bundled offers, Vodacom said.
Despite increased price competition in DRC and Mozambique and a general market slowdown in Tanzania, voice revenue increased 18.1% from a 21.4% increase in outgoing traffic.
Data revenue grew 110.5% (including M-Pesa revenue) supported by 59.4% growth in active data customers to 7.5 million.
Vodacom said that 29.8% of the active customer base currently use data, compared to 23.0% a year ago.
Active M-Pesa customers increased 24.5% to 5.8 million, representing 23.3% of the active customer base.
“In Tanzania, our most developed M-Pesa market, M-Pesa revenue grew 59.0% to contribute 19.1% of service revenue. Additionally, 25% of total Vodacom Tanzania airtime is now purchased using M-Pesa,” Vodacom said.
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