South Africa’s largest mobile operator, Vodacom, has reported a 7.8% rise in operating profit to R10.2 billion for the six months ended September 2015.<\/p>\n
Revenue for South Africa increased 5.1%, while international operations’ revenue grew 12.6%, representing 21.3% of group revenue.<\/p>\n
Vodacom’s operations include networks in South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria and Lesotho. <\/span><\/p>\n The group declared an interim dividend per share of 395 cents, up 5.3% from 2014.<\/p>\n Group active customers increased 6.8% to 65.1 million, while total active customers reached 33.7 million in SA, with 1.6 million net customer additions in the first half there.<\/p>\n South Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n Service revenue increased 2.9% to R24 billion billion as the business returned to growth, supported by the lapping of MTR cuts, customer additions, ARPU stabilisation and higher Excluding the benefit of a R325 million accounting estimate change in the prior year, service revenue grew 4.3%, Vodacom said.<\/p>\n Revenue grew faster at 5.1% to R32 billion, due mainly to a 12% increase in equipment revenue with over 5.5 million devices sold in the first half, of which 1.3 million were\u00a0 Vodacom branded devices.<\/p>\n ARPU of R112 in the second quarter was stronger than R110 in the first quarter Active contract customers increased 2.4% to 4.9 million and contract churn fell from 10.2% a year ago to 7.3%, Vodacom said.<\/p>\n Active prepaid customers increased 3.7% to 28.8 million customers, largely due to the success of customer value management programmes.<\/p>\n Data revenue increased 33.4% to R8.3 billion due to strong growth in the demand for data.<\/p>\n The improved affordability of both devices and data bundles supported a 48.0% Active data customers increased 6.8% to 17.8 million customers and data bundle sales doubled from last year largely due to the take-up of more affordable daily bundles.<\/p>\n Active smart devices on the network increased 30.9% to 12.6 million and the Tablets on the network increased 126.2% to 1.4 million, the operator said.<\/p>\n “It has been a strong start to the year with sustained growth underpinned by network superiority, customer value management excellence and distribution leadership. We lifted Group capital expenditure 5.8% to R6.2 billion, expanding 3G coverage in all our markets,” said\u00a0 Vodacom Group CEO, Shameel Joosub.<\/p>\n He said that in South Africa, LTE\/4G coverage increased from 32.2% to 46.8%.<\/p>\n “I am most encouraged by the increasing demand for data services as we make devices and data bundles more affordable. We now have 28.3 million data users across the group, driving a 33.5% increase in data revenue.<\/p>\n “Our LTE\/4G customers in South Africa, now approaching two million, consume almost three times more data as compared with 3G customers,” Joosub said.<\/p>\n He said\u00a0 that good opportunities exist in SA,\u00a0 as only 66% of the group’s monthly active customers are using data.<\/p>\n “The performance of Vodacom Business in South Africa was particularly strong with underlying service revenue growth of 12.8%, underpinned by new customer wins as well as our mobile customers choosing to purchase fixed services from us as they trust our brand and value network reliability,” he said.<\/p>\n “Neotel, which is pending Competition Tribunal approval, will further enhance our ability to contribute meaningfully to the development of fixed-line services, broadband and fibre to homes and businesses in South Africa,” the chief executive said.<\/p>\n Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Telkom on data expiry<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Vodacom reveals how much data smartphone customers use<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\ndata usage, it said.<\/p>\n
\nsupported by increased voice usage and continued data ARPU expansion as customers traded up their phones.<\/p>\n
\nincrease in data traffic. Data revenue comprises 34.3% of service revenue up from 26.4% a year ago, Vodacom said.<\/p>\n
\naverage amount of data used per month increased 18.5% to 550MB on such devices.<\/p>\nMore on Vodacom<\/h3>\n