Operators spend more on staff
Chief financial officer Kaushik Patel – incidentally, the only “chief officer” featured in Telkom’s annual report last year who’s neither gone nor “acting” in his post – says if Telkom hadn’t spent the extra cash it may have been unable to report an increase of 1,7% in fixed line revenues. The market had expected to see revenues in its traditional business declining slightly.
Vodacom spent 16,2% more on staff last year than the year before, due to an 8,4% increase in its headcount, annual salary increases and an increase in the provision for its deferred bonus scheme as profits rose.
According to its latest annual report, MTN spent significantly more on staff costs than in the previous year. However, the “y’ello” group faced a very different set of challenges to those being experienced by Telkom and Vodacom.
Last month, MTN announced a number of new high calibre appointments. They included Tim Lowry, former vice-president for Western Europe at France Telecom, as the new MD of MTN South Africa.
Former Investec corporate financier Khumo Shuenyane is MTN’s new group executive for mergers and acquisitions, while former deputy director-general at the Department of Foreign Affairs – Nozipho January-Bardill – is MTN’s new group executive for corporate affairs.
After the acquisition of Investcom and the launch of operations in Iran last year, MTN now operates in 21 countries. Not surprisingly, staff costs leapt by 87% to R2,45bn last year as the number of employees rose from 8 360 to 14 067.
There had been some concern that might stretch MTN’s management capacity. However, chairman Cyril Ramaphosa said in the annual report that to develop sustainability, MTN had to ensure the working environment would enable people to develop to their full potential and, equally, that it had the right pool of available management skills.
“This was clearly demonstrated during the current year, when MTN was able to deploy managers to new territories while continuing to attract skilled professionals to the group.”
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