{"id":13110,"date":"2012-05-22T01:05:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T23:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=13110"},"modified":"2012-05-22T12:14:20","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T10:14:20","slug":"vodacom-rallies-amid-healthy-dividend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/13110\/vodacom-rallies-amid-healthy-dividend\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom rallies amid healthy dividend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a> shares rallied on Monday (21 May) after the group announced impressive customer numbers and data demand for the year ended March 2012.<\/p>\n

The group also improved its total dividend per share by 54.3% to 710 cents.<\/p>\n

Shares in Vodacom climbed R3.10% or R3.10 to R103.10 on the JSE<\/a>, bucking a difficult few sessions prior, amid investor concerns over its operation in Congo.<\/p>\n

Vodacom Group CEO, Pieter Uys<\/a> said that the operator is appealing a court decision in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the auction of its wireless unit on 3 June.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not allow the 3rd of June to happen. They (the court) have set a date for the possible sale of the asset there. We still do not agree with the findings there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Vodacom reported a 9.4% rise in revenue to R66.93 billion for the year ended March 2012, from R61.197 billion before.<\/p>\n

The group lifted operating profit to R16.617 billion, from R 13.696 billion in 2011, while headline earnings per share improved 8.1% to 709 cents.<\/p>\n

The mobile operator said that customers increased 29.9% to 47.8 million adding 11.0 million.<\/p>\n

Group service revenue was up 7.8% to R58.245 billion, while group EBITDA<\/a> grew 10.5% to R22.763 billion.<\/p>\n

Uys noted that demand for data services remains high in South Africa. Vodacom\u2019s goal is to reach 25 million data customers by March 2014, driven by affordable smartphones.<\/p>\n

Vodacom revealed a data revenue increase of 23.6% to R7.639 million, supported by a 35.4% increase in active data customers to 12.2 million.<\/p>\n

The operator’s active data customers who purchased data bundles increased 60.4% year-on-year to 4.2 million, it said.<\/p>\n

Smartphones remained the key driver of data revenue growth for Vodacom, with active smartphones on its network increasing by 55.4% adding over 1.8 million smartphones in the year to 5.1 million.<\/p>\n

The average monthly smartphone data usage more than doubled to 92MB as Vodacom increased the number of smartphones with attached data bundles to 40.8% from 25.9% a year ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, the team delivered a very solid performance and the platforms for growth are well established. The 24% growth in group free cash flow supported a higher dividend of 710 cents and helped us deliver a 45% total shareholder return,\u201d Uys said.<\/p>\n

Related article<\/strong><\/p>\n

F&S alludes to mobile data war<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom will fight for DRC asset: Uys<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom lifts revenue by 9.4%<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom shares dip below R100 as Congo weighs<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom shares rallied on Monday (21 May) after the group announced impressive customer numbers and data demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":13118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[135,26,87,27],"class_list":["post-13110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-earnings","tag-headline","tag-pieter-uys","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13110"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13120,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13110\/revisions\/13120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}