{"id":51680,"date":"2014-01-15T10:07:27","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T08:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=51680"},"modified":"2014-01-15T10:09:59","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T08:09:59","slug":"mtn-losing-out-to-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/51680\/mtn-losing-out-to-vodacom\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN losing out to Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Financial services group Absa Capital says mobile operator, <a title=\"MTN Group\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/1640-MTN-Group\">MTN Group<\/a>,\u00a0likely lost revenue share to Vodacom in South Africa, with that dynamic likely to\u00a0continue,\u00a0Reuters reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExpect 3Q13&#8217;s market share dynamics to continue into 4Q13, with MTN losing service revenue share to Vodacom,\u201d Absa Capital\u00a0told clients in a research note.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt current (high) valuation levels, we do however see the regulator&#8217;s pending MTR decision presenting downside risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Icasa\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/2027-ICASA-Independent-Communications-Authority-of-SA\">Icasa<\/a>\u00a0announced in October 2013, that it wants to cut the costs of terminating a call on a mobile network to R0.10 over the next three years.<\/p>\n<p>A termination rate is the money networks pay to each other for connecting a call.\u00a0MTRs have declined from R1.25 in 2009 to a current price of 40 cents.<\/p>\n<p>If implemented, MTRs would have a negative impact on both Vodacom and MTN.<\/p>\n<p>Absa Capital did however, raise its price target to R222 from R210 and maintained its \u201coverweight\u201d rating for MTN, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n<p>In October 2013, MTN\u00a0reported lower than anticipated subscriber growth for the third quarter, adding just\u00a0233,000 subscribers bringing the total of subscribers to 25.2 million at the end of the quarter.<\/p>\n<p>In November,\u00a0Vodacom pointed to net connections of 949,000 active customers to 30.14 million\u00a0for South Africa\u00a0for the six months ended September 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Shares in MTN advanced in early trade on the JSE on Wednesday (15 January), up 91 cents to R211.16, up 30% over the past year. Vodacom meanwhile, was flat at R130.19, having added 16% over the past 52 week period.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on MTN and Vodacom<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"MTN subscriber growth slows\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/48178\/mtn-subscriber-growth-slows\/\"><strong>MTN subscriber growth slows<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Reason for concern at MTN?\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/48399\/reason-for-concern-at-mtn\/\"><strong>Reason for concern at MTN?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MTN Group has likely lost revenue share to Vodacom in South Africa, with that dynamic likely to continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2333,26,36,28,27],"class_list":["post-51680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-absa-capital","tag-headline","tag-icasa","tag-mtn","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51680","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51680"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51688,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51680\/revisions\/51688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}