{"id":26875,"date":"2012-11-20T14:37:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T12:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=26875"},"modified":"2012-11-21T08:47:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T06:47:35","slug":"telkom-mobile-arpu-trails-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/26875\/telkom-mobile-arpu-trails-rivals\/","title":{"rendered":"Telkom mobile’s alarming ARPU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Telkom<\/a> revealed that the blended average revenue per user (ARPU) for its mobile arm, 8ta<\/a>, was almost half of its rival, Vodacom<\/a> when it published its results on Monday (19 November).<\/p>\n

While Telkom bemoaned lower fixed-line revenue for a 48.9% drop in group profit before tax of R547 million for the six months ended September 2012, 8ta only added 551,000 new revenue-generating subscribers to total 1.495 million, from 944,000 in September 2011.<\/p>\n

Telkom reported a marginal decline in revenue for the six months ended September 2012, but an 80.6% decline in headline earnings per share to 37.2 cents.<\/p>\n

Mobile revenue increased 198.3% to R898 million, while 8ta reported an ebitda loss of R587 million, down from R1.066 billion before.<\/p>\n

Telkom highlighted active mobile subscribers of 1.495 million, a 2.2% market share in SA (0.9% September 2011), with a blended ARPU of R68.62.<\/p>\n

Pre-paid subscribers improved 52.4% to 1.122 million over the reporting period, and post-paid subscribers increased 45% to 373,116.<\/p>\n

Pre-paid ARPU improved marginally, by 3.4% to R23.12, while post-paid ARPU declined 40.8% to R169.30.<\/p>\n

Telkom said that churn for pre-paid customers rose to 52%, from 41% in 2011, with Telkom\u2019s executives attributing the increase to the ongoing price war in the mobile space, with customer\u2019s showing \u201cno loyalty\u201d to operators in the pre-paid segment.<\/p>\n

In contrast, rival operator Vodacom recently announced a 21.9% rise in active customers for South Africa in results for the six months ended September 2012, to 30.8 million.<\/p>\n

Vodacom recorded blended ARPU of R127, but did note that this was down 21.1% due to the higher prevalence of lower usage customers, a reduction in MTRs and lower out of bundle spend from customer.<\/p>\n

Vodacom\u2019s churn in SA was at 42.4%, higher than 40.2% in 2011, but well below 62.2% in 2010.<\/p>\n

Vodacom reported pre-paid ARPU of R73, and contract ARPU of R334.<\/p>\n

MTN<\/a>, meanwhile, in interim results reported in August, reported blended ARPU of R123 with post-paid at R265 and prepaid at R92.<\/p>\n

In a quarterly update in October, MTN said that blended ARPU remained stable at R121.25<\/p>\n

\u201cPrepaid ARPU showed an upward trend as minutes of use improved from lower tariffs and positive elasticity while post-paid ARPU continued to decline due to lower ‘out of bundle’ spend and a high volume of telemetry SIMS,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

According to investment analysts at First Avenue Investment Management, Cell C’s blended ARPU is approximately\u00a0R93.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h3>\n

Telkom value shrinks R60bn in 4 years<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Telkom points to further earnings pain<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Crisis-hit Telkom dips below R17<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN Group subscribers up to 182.7 million<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom sees 8.4% rise in H1 revenue<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Telkom has revealed that the blended average revenue per user (ARPU) for its mobile arm, 8ta, was almost half of its rival, Vodacom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[407,1484,26,28,65,27],"class_list":["post-26875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-8ta","tag-arpu","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875","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=26875"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26961,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875\/revisions\/26961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}