In 6 months Vumatel made more than R1 billion

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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In 6 months Vumatel made more than R1 billion

Remgro released its financial results for the six months ended 31 December 2020, which showed that Vumatel increased its revenue by 43% to R1.092 billion during the reporting period.

Vumatel is South Africa’s largest fibre-to-the-home network operator with over 19,000km of fibre assets.

It continues to grow its Active Ethernet and GPON fibre network across South Africa through various rollout initiatives.
 
Revenue is one thing, I am more interested in what their profit margin is on that revenue.

Plus Vumatel is part of CIVH, so Vumatel may make a profit as a standalone entity, but other entities within CIVH may make a loss so Vumatel's profit would be used to float the remainder of the entity and thus can't lower prices.

Will have to wait and see what CIVH's financials look like when they release them for this financial year. Last year was not particularly stellar for them from what I remember.
 
Awesome, now if only they could spend some of that money on better redundancy
Whole of Rivonia and surrounds have been down since 1AM

Edit: seems its a fiber break on the SADV side effecting the whole of Sandton... Same fam though
 
Sinbad said:
Do you guys not know the difference between revenue and profit?

It costs a lot to roll out a network. I think our suburb was somewhere over 70 million rand.
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I agree. Respect to Vumatel. In time their prices will decrease some. Their "R&D" investments need to be paid off.
 
Hackson said:
It's not that we want to pay less, we just want to get more for paying so much. Starting from April, I'll be paying R907 for 20/20.

That's just wrong.
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On Vodacom you pay that for 20/10. Although their network seems to be better quality compared to the Vumatel complaints at least.
 
Just to throw a spanner in the works.

As much as a price war right now would be nice, i personally think the more important goal over the next few years should be to get as much of the country covered with fiber as possible. Once more of the network has been paid for then prices will fall quite quickly, but for now keeping profits up will make it a lot easier to subsidize the roll out to less profitable areas. In the meantime increasing speeds at current pricing levels should give customers more value.
 
It would be nice if Vumatel would share some of their wonderful profits with their clients, who help to provide them in the first place. All we hear is how opposition Fiber providers are reducing prices, some by as much as 30 %; giving faster speeds, etc., while VUMATEL continues to raise prices and gives NOTHING in return. They have a monopoly in many areas and are taking full advantage of that so we have no choice in who we use. VERY UNFAIR! I thought that wasn't allowed in this Country!
 
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Zyzzyva said:
Just to throw a spanner in the works.

As much as a price war right now would be nice, i personally think the more important goal over the next few years should be to get as much of the country covered with fiber as possible. Once more of the network has been paid for then prices will fall quite quickly, but for now keeping profits up will make it a lot easier to subsidize the roll out to less profitable areas. In the meantime increasing speeds at current pricing levels should give customers more value.
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...is this not the same argument Voda and MTN used to spin... ?
 
FluffyT said:
It would be nice if Vumatel would share some of their wonderful profits with their clients, who help to provide them in the first place. All we hear is how opposition Fiber providers are reducing prices, some by as much as 30 %; giving faster speeds, etc., while VUMATEL continues to raise prices and gives NOTHING in return. They have a monopoly in many areas and are taking full advantage of that so we have no choice in who we use. VERY UNFAIR! I thought that (monopoly) wasn't allowed in this Country!
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Revenue != Profit
Most of the Revenue is being used to grow the network.
Vumatel not a monopoly, you can:
1) Move to another suburb covered by a different FNO
2) Use alternatives like WISP, "AirFibre", Fixed LTE/5G, VDSL, Starlink (soon)
 
FluffyT said:
It would be nice if Vumatel would share some of their wonderful profits with their clients, who help to provide them in the first place. All we hear is how opposition Fiber providers are reducing prices, some by as much as 30 %; giving faster speeds, etc., while VUMATEL continues to raise prices and gives NOTHING in return. They have a monopoly in many areas and are taking full advantage of that so we have no choice in who we use. VERY UNFAIR! I thought that wasn't allowed in this Country!
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What you gonna do? Force other providers to roll out in Vumatel areas instead of where they themselves think it best to roll out?
 
yebocan said:
...is this not the same argument Voda and MTN used to spin... ?
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As ToxicBunny implied above, we will need to wait and see what their profits are and where those profits are going. If it's going into their pockets and not into network expansion then of course you are right. Only time will tell. But one thing is clearly true. Very low margins right now will limit their ability to expand the network to less profitable areas.

For me all i care about right now is that fiber rollout is a thing and the more it happens - even recklessly from a business perspective - the better. Once fiber is in the ground market forces and perhaps even regulators will sort out the other issues.
 
Zyzzyva said:
As ToxicBunny implied above, we will need to wait and see what their profits are and where those profits are going. If it's going into their pockets and not into network expansion then of course you are right. Only time will tell. But one thing is clearly true. Very low margins right now will limit their ability to expand the network to less profitable areas.

For me all i care about right now is that fiber rollout is a thing and the more it happens - even recklessly from a business perspective - the better. Once fiber is in the ground market forces and perhaps even regulators will sort out the other issues.
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again same hopefulness we all had with our mobile operators... just highlighting the pattern.
 
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yebocan said:
again same hopefulness we all had with our mobile operators... just highlighting the pattern.
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It's been slower than we would have liked, but mobile pricing has improved quite a bit over the years. 1000 gig LTE products for R999 were a pipe dream 10 years ago.
 
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