South African telecoms firm Vodacom Group, part of the UK’s Vodafone Group, has reported revenues of ZAR20.219 billion (USD1.82 billion) for the three months ended 31 December 2013, up 10.5% from ZAR18.294 billion in the corresponding period one year earlier. Revenues from international operations reached ZAR3.838 billion, up by 33.5% year-on-year, while South African operations generated a total of ZAR16.502 billion, representing a 6.6% increase on the ZAR15.475 billion reported in 4Q12. In operational terms, Vodacom Group’s consolidated customer base reached 55.983 million, up by 12.3% y-o-y from 49.849 million. Growth was mainly attributed to the company’s international subsidiaries, which saw their collective subscriber base increase by 22.8% to 25.019 million in the period under review, across five countries, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Lesotho and Nigeria. In four of the foreign markets, Vodacom is present n the consumer segment, while its presence in Nigeria is via its Vodacom Business Africa (Nigeria) unit.
Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO, commented: ‘This quarter highlights once again that our strategy of sustained network investment is key to allow us to grow our overall business while still driving down the cost to communicate. In South Africa as an example, we have continued with our pricing transformation to drive the adoption of price plans that offer more value to customers, which has reduced the pre-paid average price per minute by 25.3% to USD0.56 and the average effective price per MB of data by 16.2%. The number of smartphones on our network in South Africa is now 7.2 million up 600,000 from the previous quarter and the average amount of data used by each smartphone increased 83.5% to 254MB per month.’
05 Feb 2014
