{"id":42270,"date":"2013-07-18T10:45:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T08:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=42270"},"modified":"2013-07-18T11:09:18","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T09:09:18","slug":"vodacom-the-good-and-the-not-so-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/42270\/vodacom-the-good-and-the-not-so-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom: the good and the not so good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a> cheered a 28.2% rise in group data revenue in a quarterly trading update on Thursday (18 July) with active data customers 23.3% to 19.4 million amid a continued smartphone drive.<\/p>\n

In results for the quarter ended 30 June 2013, active customers increased 5.3% to 51.5 million, but the group also pointed to a marginal decline in SA customers on a yearly\u00a0comparative\u00a0base.<\/p>\n

Vodacom added 50 cents to R118 in early trade on the JSE, up nearly 27% over the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cData and the International operations remain key parts of the growth story. Data revenue in South Africa increased 21.8% and now accounts for 21.3% of service revenue, up from 17.5% a year ago,\u201d said Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cContinued network investment supported the increase in data traffic in South Africa, with 1.3 million additional smartphones active and using on average 75% more data per device than a year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vodacom said that South Africa\u2019s growth was driven by higher penetration of smartphones and increased mobile internet usage supported by an increased take-up of integrated price plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past twelve months we added 1.3 million smartphones on our network, bringing the total number to 6.3 million and average monthly usage increased 75% to 216MB. At 30 June 2013, active data customers totalled 14.4 million, up 16.5% from a year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group said it continues to see positive results from the recent launch of its Vodacom Smart and Red integrated price plans. \u201c13.5% of our customer base is now on integrated price plans and almost 30% of our contract mobile customer revenue is from these customers,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Declining SA customers<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Vodacom reported a\u00a05.3% rise in active customers to 51.5 million, as international operations continued to expand their coverage, the situation in South Africa is less rosy.<\/p>\n

For its local operation, Vodacom noted that its customer numbers declined 2.3% year-on-year to 29.282 million, from 29.971 million\u00a0in 2012.\u00a0On a quarterly basis, customer numbers improved 0.3% to 29.190 million.<\/p>\n

In April, rival operator\u00a0MTN<\/a>\u00a0said in a quarterly update for the period ended March 2013 that, while its customer base exceeded 195 million people in 22 countries, its operation in South Africa experienced a 1.9%\u00a0decline to\u00a024.950 million from 25.421 million in Q4 2012.<\/p>\n

South Africa’s third operator, Cell C<\/a> claimed on Wednesday (17 July) however, that its subscriber numbers had swelled to 11.5 million, from nine million over the past 18 months, giving the group an approximate 14% market share.<\/p>\n

In June, Telkom<\/a>\u2019s financial reports revealed that it only had 1,534,265 active mobile subscribers at 31 March 2013, up 3.4% from a year earlier.<\/p>\n

\"Vodacom<\/a>

Vodacom active customers<\/p><\/div>\n

Financials<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom said that group revenue increased 3.0% to R17.536 billion, boosted by\u00a0the strong growth in equipment revenue in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Group service revenue was up 2.3% to R14.636 billion due to the 28.2% growth in data revenue and the 1.6% growth in voice\u00a0revenue, partially offset by the 14.6% decline in mobile incoming revenue.<\/p>\n

\"Vodacom<\/a>

Vodacom revenue<\/p><\/div>\n

In South Africa, revenue increased 3.9% to R14.549 billion; however, service revenue decreased 0.2% to R11.678 billion, with a 23.5% decrease in mobile incoming revenue from MTR cuts offset by the\u00a0growth in mobile customer revenue of 2.5%.<\/p>\n

The first quarter service revenue decline of 0.2% is an improvement from the 2.0%
\ndecline reported in the fourth quarter last year. This, Vodacom said, is primarily due to the better performance of voice revenue.<\/p>\n

ARPU declined 0.8%\u00a0year on year to R125 (vs. 9.3% decline in Q4 2013), impacted mainly by the MTR cut, the group said.<\/p>\n

More on Vodacom<\/h3>\n

Vodacom SA customers flattening out<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom hunts 30,000 SME clients<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom keen on acquisitions, but where?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom expects data growth spurt<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

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

MTN hits 195 million subscribers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom’s healthy data figures in a quarterly trading update on Thursday were somewhat offset by its drop in local customer numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":41935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,26,28,27],"class_list":["post-42270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42270","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=42270"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42284,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42270\/revisions\/42284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}