Vodacom Group has issued a trading update for the quarter ended 30 June 2020.
Group service revenue was up 7,6% and Group revenue grew by 5,6%, benefitting from strong growth in South Africa with customer demand increasing during the lock down period.
International operations were negatively impacted by lower economic activity from the effects of Covid-19.
South Africa service revenue growth was solid at 6,4% for the quarter, supported by strong demand for data and connectivity services in the period.
International service revenue grew by 10,7% benefiting from the rand devaluation. Underlying performance was subdued with a 5,3% decline, as a result of lower economic trading activity, free M-Pesa services and customer registration requirements in these businesses.
Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO, comments: “In the face of an unprecedented global pandemic, Vodacom Group has responded rapidly to assist governments where it operates in curbing the spread of Covid-19 while also adapting to significant changes in customer demands and behaviour patterns.
“In South Africa, the combination of increased demand for data following significant tariff reductions of up to 40% effected on 1 April and more people working and being educated remotely, resulted in a significant increase in mobile and fixed traffic in the first quarter.
“As a result, we accelerated network infrastructure spend by R500-million to R2,7-billion in Q1 and used the temporary assignment of spectrum by ICASA to rapidly increase network capacity to ensure that we continue to deliver a high quality experience to customers,” Joosub adds.
“The temporary spectrum assignment also allowed us to fast track the launch of South Africa’s first mobile 5G network and our fixed 5G commercial service.
“Collaboration is instrumental in defeating COVID-19 and it is for this reason we have concluded a number of innovative partnerships in recent months with particular emphasis on health, education, free public benefit services, big data analytics and financial services to support citizens and governments.”