{"id":82731,"date":"2015-03-17T12:30:09","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T10:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=82731"},"modified":"2015-03-17T12:30:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T10:30:09","slug":"dark-fibre-africa-eyes-r500-million-revenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/82731\/dark-fibre-africa-eyes-r500-million-revenue\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Fibre Africa eyes R500 million revenue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dark Fibre Africa (DFA<\/a>), which constructs and owns fibre-optic networks, has reported a 15% rise in revenue for the six months ended September 2014 to R468 million, on the back of 31% growth in annuity revenue.<\/p>\n

This according to investment holding company, Remgro, which has an effective interest of 43.8% in the CIV group which is active in the telecommunications and information technology sectors.<\/p>\n

Taking into account Remgro\u2019s direct interest of 23% in DFA, Remgro has an economic interest of 49.7% in the net asset value of the group.<\/p>\n

DFA\u2019s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation increased by 16% to R344 million, while the book value of it’s fibre-optic network is in excess of R4.7 billion, the group said.<\/p>\n

DFA said it secured a healthy annuity income in excess of R65 million per month with the majority being on long-term contracts with customers.<\/p>\n

The company said it lowered its average cost of funding through the refinancing of its debt of R3.5 billion with a consortium of lenders from a project finance structure to a more corporate debt-type arrangement consisting of R2.5 billion of long-term debt and R1 billion of short-term debt.<\/p>\n

DFA said it has experienced delays in wayleave approvals by the local councils planning their own fibre network.<\/p>\n

Most of DFA\u2019s customers extended their initial contract periods of five years to either 10 or 15 years.<\/p>\n

The group owns fibre network rings in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban (expanding to Pietermaritzburg), Midrand, Centurion and Pretoria.<\/p>\n

During the past twelve months, the network has been expanded to a further 17 smaller metros, including East London, Polokwane, Tlokwe, Emalahleni and George to name a few, it said.<\/p>\n

DFA has 6,290 (March 2014: 5,618) base transceiver station sites on the network that cover three of the four mobile operators.<\/p>\n

The company also initiated the deployment of proof of concepts Fibre to the Home (FTTH) projects in selected suburbs in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n

It has signed commercial lease agreements with 64 (March 2014: 56) customers that have Electronic Communication Network Licences ranging from the largest incumbents, to banks, to small niche operators.<\/p>\n

“The revenue model is flexible to adapt to the customers\u2019 needs, and DFA either sells an indefeasible right of use agreement which is a lump sum in advance, or on an annuity basis with multi-year contracts of mostly up to 15 years,” DFA said.<\/p>\n

It said that approximately 78% of total revenue is annuity revenue. The future value of the current annuity contract base is in excess of R8.5 billion.<\/p>\n

More on DFA<\/h3>\n

DFA scoops R3.5 billion in funding<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

DFA boosts interim revenue by 35%<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

DFA targets last mile with acquisition<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dark Fibre Africa has reported a 15% rise in revenue for the six months ended September 2014 to R468 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":6900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[25,5416,1757,2591],"class_list":["post-82731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-active","tag-civ","tag-dfa","tag-remgro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82731","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=82731"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82741,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82731\/revisions\/82741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}