Telkom today announced a strong financial performance, boosted by the full consolidation of BCX and a solid performance from the mobile business.
Operating revenue grew approximately 10% to R41-billion and net revenue growth of 8% to R32-billion was positively impacted by the reclassification of BCX cost of sales as part of the change of the group accounting policy.
BCX was consolidated for the full year compared to seven months’ revenue in the prior year. The mobile service revenue accelerated by 38%, driven by an almost 48% increase in active customers as the demand for mobile services intensified. Service revenue strips out handsets from revenue.
Telkom Group chief executive officer (GCEO) Sipho Maseko, says: “I am pleased with the significant strides we’ve made in a difficult operating environment, which was characterised by regulatory uncertainty, increased competition and a weak economic climate.”
The mobile business continued to be the star performer of the group and delivered service revenue growth of 38% and an earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of R660-million. This comes after four years of EBITDA losses for this division.
BCX remains a key growth platform for the group. The integration of Telkom’s Enterprise business with BCX is complete, and a new brand “BCX” was launched. The company now has a singular sales team, a unified go-to-market strategy and one brand.
“We began to win new customers in the public, retail, banking and financial service sectors against credible competitors as we leveraged off our ability to offer end-to-end solutions,” says Maseko.
Telkom accelerated its capital investment to ensure future growth, focusing on fibre and mobile business. Openserve continues to lead in the fibre market with more than 2,2-million premises passed with fibre. This is underpinned by improved operational efficiencies in network roll-out and more streamlined processes.
“Customer experience remains important to us and is an ongoing journey,” says Maseko. “We continue to focus on our systems and processes to improve customer experience. Our improved IT systems contributed to enhancing customer experience by reducing systems response time, increasing self service via mobile apps, and reducing the multiple steps in the approval process for customers. The process redesign enabled us to improve our assurance, fulfilling and billing processes.”
To ensure Telkom remains relevant in a continually changing information and communications technology (ICT) environment, the company has heightened its efforts in talent management and developing skills. “We are investing in our employees at all levels to ensure we have the right skills’ sets in the company. We believe our focus on talent management will ensure the sustainability of our business,” says Maseko.