{"id":49293,"date":"2013-11-11T23:20:01","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T21:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=49293"},"modified":"2013-11-12T08:58:20","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T06:58:20","slug":"vodacom-ma-on-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/49293\/vodacom-ma-on-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom M&A on ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a> CEO Shameel Joosub<\/a> says that there are no imminent merger and\u00a0acquisition targets on the horizon outside of South Africa, with focus on a deal to purchase fixed line player, Neotel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been involved in a few processes. Some of these things are stop-start. Some of these things, you get what I call seller’s remorse\u2026they decide to pull out after you have spent millions on it.<\/p>\n

“M&A is never easy, and I think its quite time consuming. Neotel is taking a lot of time, let\u2019s be honest,” the chief executive said.<\/p>\n

Vodacom\u00a0and the shareholders of\u00a0Neotel\u00a0confirmed on 30 September,\u00a0that they had entered into exclusive discussions regarding a potential acquisition of 100% of the shares of Neotel by Vodacom SA.<\/p>\n

Joosub said that it was difficult to put a time frame to a potential conclusion of the Neotel deal, however,\u00a0Sunil Joshi<\/a>, MD & CEO of Neotel said last month that a deal between the fixed line operator and Vodacom could be concluded in six months.<\/p>\n

“I think the big part for us is to have avenues for growth, more so than just adding countries,” Joosub told BusinessTech.<\/p>\n

Vodacom said that service revenue for its international operations improved\u00a034.7% and EBITDA recorded growth of 39.2%\u00a0for the six months ended September 2013.<\/p>\n

When asked if there were any opportunities on the horizon, Joosub said: “Not imminently, no\u201d.<\/p>\n

Vodacom was believed to have expressed interest in expanding into Madagascar through an acquisition of\u00a0Telecom Malagasy SA<\/a>\u00a0in mid-July.<\/p>\n

Capital Investment<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom said on Monday (11 November) that it aims to accelerate network investment in order to cater for projects including fibre to the home, and fibre to the business.<\/p>\n

Joosub added \u00a0that the capital investment would enable the group to capture further opportunities within those markets in which the group already has a presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo cater for continued growth, we plan to accelerate network investment and we are currently in the process of determining the investment allocation per country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neotel acquisition<\/strong><\/p>\n

A deal between\u00a0Vodacom\u00a0and\u00a0Neotel\u00a0could be valued at as much as R10 billion rand ($994 million) according to a report in Bloomberg, citing a person close to the\u00a0negotiations.<\/p>\n

In a Q2 FY14 Investor Fact Sheet, Neotel\u2019s majority shareholder\u00a0Tata Communications put Neotel\u2019s\u00a0net debt at R4.946 billion as at September 30, 2013, up from\u00a0 R4.918 billion in June 2013.<\/p>\n

Gross debt\u00a0amounted\u00a0to R5,09 billion, from\u00a0\u00a0R5.1 billion before.<\/p>\n

Joosub said that Vodacom would benefit from Project Spring \u2013 a programme initiated by its parent company,\u00a0Vodafone<\/a>, after it\u00a0sold its stake in\u00a0Verizon Wireless<\/a>\u00a0for $135 billion \u2013 aimed at establishing \u201cfurther network and service leadership\u201d through network upgrades and increased capacity.<\/p>\n

In a conference call on Monday, Joosub said that Vodacom put together a\u00a0programme of how it wanted to grow in South Africa, noting that Project Spring helped in getting those projects approved.<\/p>\n

The CEO stressed that Vodafone had not provided Vodacom with a lump sum to fund the Neotel acquisition.<\/p>\n

More on Vodacom<\/h3>\n

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

\u00a0Vodacom reveals investment plans<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom customers up 10%<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom not desperate for acquisitions<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom-Neotel deal six months away<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub says that there are no imminent merger and acquisition targets on the horizon, outside of SA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":23257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,261,3403,2898,27],"class_list":["post-49293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-neotel","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-sunil-joshi","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49293","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=49293"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49322,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49293\/revisions\/49322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}