{"id":143182,"date":"2016-11-15T07:58:11","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T05:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=143182"},"modified":"2016-11-15T08:04:24","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T06:04:24","slug":"telkom-earnings-boosted-by-rise-in-mobile-subscribers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/143182\/telkom-earnings-boosted-by-rise-in-mobile-subscribers\/","title":{"rendered":"Telkom earnings boosted by rise in mobile subscribers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Telkom on Tuesday announced a 20.6% rise in revenue to just over R20 billion for the period ended September 2016, driven by its acquisition of BCX, and improved mobile revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Mobile voice and subscriber revenue increased 30% to R520 million, due mainly to a 42% increase in the number of active mobile subscribers. However, the group noted that blended ARPU declined a fraction, to R88.84, from R89.05 previously.<\/p>\n<p>Telkom said that BCX was consolidated for the six months, reporting revenue of R3.6 billion compared to one month revenue of R489 million in the prior corresponding period.<\/p>\n<p>Excluding BCX, operating revenue and net operating revenue grew 2% and 0.9% respectively attributable to the mobile business.<\/p>\n<p>Telkom announced an interim dividend of 131 cents per share for the period.<\/p>\n<p>Highlights<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Net operating revenue up 3.3% to R13.8 billion<\/li>\n<li>EBITDA increased 4.6% to R5.3 billion with an EBITDA margin of 26.1%<\/li>\n<li>Headline earnings per share (HEPS) increased 19.7% to 336.0 cents<\/li>\n<li>Capex increased 55.8% to R3.6 billion with capex to revenue of 18%<\/li>\n<li>Group net cash and cash equivalents increased to R1.8 billion<\/li>\n<li>Operating profit of R2.59 billion<\/li>\n<li>Revenue generated from mobile up 42% to R3.2 billion<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Telkom said that mobile broadband revenue grew 43.2% to R1 billion supported by 2.3 million mobile broadband customers, an increase of 44.5% compared to the prior corresponding period.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We now have 70.8% of our customer base using data at an average of 2.7 Gigabytes per customer per month,&#8221; said CEO Sipho Maseko.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our smartphone base has grown by 43.7 percent to 1.6 million. On the back of the upgrade of our network, in July we launched a groundbreaking broadband-led product, called FreeMe. Early indications show significant increase in gross connection monthly run rates and an uplift in ARPUs in the two month period,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>In the fixed business, Maseko said that Telkom has seen a significant demand for fibre including existing ADSL customers migrating to fibre. &#8220;However we encountered operational issues with fulfilment of orders including the impact of the industrial action. We are currently reviewing our processes in order to improve fulfilment,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have seen an increase in ports activated via MSAN access by 24.1% to approximately 1.3 million homes passed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Fibre to the home increased to 144,512 homes and 850 gated communities. The current connectivity rate is above 13%, Telkom said. It added that it has approximately 42,176 fibre connections to business premises.<\/p>\n<p>Maseko highlighted a significant reduction in headcount over the period as part of a transformation journey &#8211; down 14.3% to 12,184 people. BCX grew its employees by 6.7% to 6,234 people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More on Telkom<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Read this: <a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/131358\/telkom-ceos-pay-hits-r14-5-million\/\">Telkom CEO\u2019s pay hits R14.5 million<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Telkom on Tuesday announced a 20.6% rise in revenue to just over R20 billion for the period ended September 2016, driven by its acquisition of BCX, and improved mobile revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":79884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[26,65],"class_list":["post-143182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-headline","tag-telkom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143182","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143182"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143200,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143182\/revisions\/143200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}