Strong device sales and service revenues – including data – boosted Vodacom’s growth in the South African market for the year ended 31 March.
Group revenue grew strongly at 6,3% to R86,4-billion; normalised growth, excluding currency translation effects, was 7,8%.
Group service revenue grew 3,4% to R70,6-billion; normalised growth, excluding currency translation effects, was 5,1%.
Vodacom added 7-million customers during the year, 4,5-million in South Africa, and 2,5-million in international operations.
Safaricom added 1,4-million customers.
The Vodacom group now reaches more than 103-million customers.
South Africa revenue growth accelerated to 8,1% boosted by strong device sales, while service revenue increased 4,9% to R54,6-billion.
In South Africa, data revenue grew strongly at 12,8% to R23,4-billion, contributing 42,8% of service revenue. This represents strong growth as we transform pricing for customers by reducing out-of-bundle spend.
This was achieved by improving customer data usage notifications, reducing of out-of-bundle rates by as much as 50%, and introducing more value offers on contract plans.
In the second half, 12% of data revenue was out-of-bundle revenue, down from 22% in the first half last year.
Data traffic growth remains robust at 43,7%, enabled through growing our data network coverage and capacity as well as focussing our device strategy on increasing 3G and 4G device uptake.
4G customers on the network increased 44,8% to 7,3-million, while the average megabyte per smart device increased 18,4% to 784Mb.
Enterprise service revenue grew 10,8% now contributing 25,7% of service revenue.
International operations continue to improve with normalised service revenue growth of 7,4% or 0,3% on a reported basis.
Group EBIT improved 4,4% to R23.1-billion, with good improvement in international operations.
Significant investments totalling R11,6-billion expanded coverage and improved quality in the Vodacom networks – R8,9-billion of this investment was made in South Africa alone.
Safaricom contributed R1,5-billion profit for the eight months since acquisition, after deducting the amortisation of fair valued assets and before minority interest.
Net profit increased 18,6%, boosted by the Safaricom acquisition and by the profit from the sale of Helios Towers Tanzania.
Headline earnings per share remained constant at 923 cents per share, impacted by shares issued to acquire the Safaricom stake.
Final dividend per share of 425 cents
Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub comments: “Our sustained investment in customer and network experience across our operations was a major factor in attracting the additional 4,5-million customers in South Africa and 2,5-million internationally. Safaricom added 1.4 million customers to push the combined total to over 103-million customers.
“Securing an outright Net Promoter Score (NPS) lead over competitors in all our operations is another key milestone attained this year.
“Despite a tougher economic environment in South Africa, big data-led innovations contributed to robust demand for personalised bundles and a 4,9% growth in service revenue.
“Strong device sales, cost optimisation measures and the effective execution of our pricing transformation programme also played a major role in the sound commercial performance in our largest market.
“This was a solid achievement given the revenue impact from reducing out-of-bundle data prices by as much as 50% in October last year as well as the early phase investments in new revenue streams, including fibre, content propositions and financial services.
“Over the past three years, we have reduced effective voice and data prices by 36,3% and 42,5% respectively, while maintaining revenue growth,” Joosub says. “Our accelerated rural coverage programme was instrumental in Vodacom becoming the continent’s first operator to reach 80% population coverage on a 4G network.”