{"id":38180,"date":"2013-05-20T12:50:37","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T10:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=38180"},"modified":"2013-05-21T09:30:51","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T07:30:51","slug":"vodacom-expects-data-growth-spurt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/38180\/vodacom-expects-data-growth-spurt\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom expects data growth spurt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom Group<\/a> CEO, Shameel Joosub<\/a> says he expects data revenue to account for up to 30% of total revenue within the next three years, driven by the operator’s South African operations.<\/p>\n

On Monday (20 May), the group reported a marginal increase in service revenue for the year ended March 2013 to R59.33 billion, from R58.245 billion in the prior period.<\/p>\n

By 12h45 on Monday, Vodacom’s shares were trading at R113.19, down 2.27% on the JSE.<\/p>\n

Operating profit increased 13.7% to R18.897 billion, from R16.617 billion, while headline earnings per share (HEPS) was up 23% to R8.72.<\/p>\n

Vodacom delivered a final dividend per share of 430 cents; with total dividends per share for the year of 785 cents, up 10.6%.<\/p>\n

In South Africa, active customers were up 4.9% to 30.3 million, increasing by 1.4 million customers in the year.<\/p>\n

Data revenue in its principle country of operation increased 16.3% to R8.88 billion, contributing 18.4% to service revenue compared to 15.8% a year ago.<\/p>\n

Joosub said he expects data revenue to account for 30%-plus of total service revenue by 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cFourth quarter data revenue growth was above 20% as we focused on accelerating take-up of data services with new promotions. Data traffic grew 39.5% which more than offset a 17.9% reduction in the average effective price per megabyte (MB),\u201d Joosub said.<\/p>\n

Growth, he pointed out, was driven by higher penetration of smartphones and increased mobile internet usage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have made a considerable investment in working capital to drive affordability of smartphones and tablets through handset financing, with an additional 1.2 million smartphones now active on our network.”<\/p>\n

“This brought the total number of smartphones to 6.0 million, up 26% and average monthly usage increased 43.4% to 139MB. We now have 14.4 million active data customers, up 18.1%,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Vodacom\u2019s head office is in Johannesburg, South Africa while the group also has operation networks in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Lesotho.<\/p>\n

For its international oprations, Vodacom reported an 11% increase in service revenue to R11.26 billion.<\/p>\n

Active data customers internationally, improved 40.9% to 4.1 million.
\nData revenue grew 106.9% supported by 40.9% growth in active data customers to 4.1 million, 19.3% of the customer base, it said.<\/p>\n

More on Vodacom<\/strong><\/p>\n

Market pressure slows Vodacom revenue<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom, MTN courting Neotel purchase?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom shares rally 5.5% on expected earnings<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom sees earnings lift<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom\u2019s problem-parent, Vodafone<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA telcos still a winner: analyst<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom slides on SA opp concerns<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom, MTN feel Cell C\u2019s punches: investor<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom lifted by smartphone and tablet sales<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom expects data revenue to account for up to 30% of total revenue within the next three years, driven by its South African operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":23325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,3403,27],"class_list":["post-38180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38180","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=38180"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38188,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38180\/revisions\/38188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}