{"id":26322,"date":"2012-11-13T01:53:46","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T23:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=26322"},"modified":"2012-11-13T09:37:20","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T07:37:20","slug":"weve-cracked-africa-model-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/26322\/weve-cracked-africa-model-vodacom\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve cracked Africa model: Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a> CEO, Shameel Joosub<\/a> believes that the group has \u201ccracked the Africa model\u201d and is ready for a more aggressive assault on the continent.<\/p>\n

Shares in Vodacom closed at an all-time high on the JSE on Monday, up 4.95% or R5.49 to R116.39 after the group reported a 36.5% rise in service revenue for its international operation to R5.99 billion, and lifted its interim dividend per share by 36.5%, to 355 cents.<\/p>\n

Group active customers also grew as much as 20.8%, to 50.1 million.<\/p>\n

Out of total revenue of R34.43 billion for the six months ended September 2012, international operations now account for 20.2%, from the 16.9% in 2011.<\/p>\n

Data revenue grew 140.7%, supported by 128.0% growth in active data customers to 4.3 million.<\/p>\n

According to Joosub, \u201cthe International operations have reached a critical turning point in terms of profitability, EBITDA increased 92.3% to R1.269 billion and the EBITDA margin grew by 6.0 pts to 20.6%, as we started to realise scale benefits from significant revenue growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company chief also highlighted a substantial increase in capital investment in its international divisions, up 130.4% to R1.023 billion, or 16.6% of revenue.<\/p>\n

The Group sold its investments, supplier agreements and assets in Gateway Carrier Services, which formed part of Vodacom\u2019s International reportable segment, for US$35 million. The sale became effective on 31 August.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Joosub said that Vodacom would adopt a two pronged approach in Africa, namely, to continue to drive further penetration within the markets it is currently in, and seek new opportunities \u201cmore proactively\u201d outside its current operations.<\/p>\n

Aside from its headquarters in South Africa, Vodacom has additional networks in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Lesotho, but it is dwarfed by rival MTN Group<\/a>, which has operations in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking at opportunities in Africa, we believe we\u2019ve cracked the Africa model now,\u201d Joosub said, but he remained tight-lipped on exactly where those potential opportunities were.<\/p>\n

The chief executive highlighted the success of it mobile financial service M-Pesa, with active customers almost doubling compared to the previous period to 4.2 million customers in the reporting period.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith 47.1% of Tanzania\u2019s customer base actively using M-Pesa, the service now contributes 12.6% to Tanzania\u2019s service revenue, up considerably from 6.9 % a year ago. Building on this success, similar money transfer services will be rolled out in the DRC, Mozambique and Lesotho in the next nine months,”\u00a0 he said.<\/p>\n

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Good value Vodacom not without challenges<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom CEO, Shameel Joosub believes the group has \u201ccracked the Africa model\u201d and is ready for a more aggressive assault on the continent.<\/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":[26,1415,3403,27],"class_list":["post-26322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-m-pesa","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26322","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=26322"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26327,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26322\/revisions\/26327"}],"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=26322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}