Telkom killing it on data

Telkom has released a trading update for the quarter that ended 31 December 2024, revealing slight group revenue growth of 0.9% to nearly R11 billion and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) growth of 28%.

It said the revenue growth was largely driven by demand for data-led services. The company also recorded significant mobile service revenue growth for Telkom Mobile, growing 9.6% to R5.4 billion.

“The Mobile Business delivered strong operating revenue growth of 6.5% to R6,346 million, market by a 9.6% increase in mobile service revenue to R5,401 million, fueled by the strategic execution of innovative value-accretive offerings amidst intensifying competitive measures,” says Telkom.

Mobile data revenue showed marked growth, increasing by 10.8% from R3.69 billion in Q3 2023 to R4.09 billion in Q3 2024.

“Mobile data revenue, a subset of mobile service revenue, benefitted from mobile data subscribers and data traffic expansion,” says Telkom.

For reference, Telkom Mobile data subscribers grew by 17.3% to 14.9 billion, comprising 62.3% of its total subscriber base. The data subscriber expansion drove data traffic growth of 22.2% to 452 petabytes during the quarter.

Telkom Mobile’s prepaid segment increased subscribers by 25% to 21 million, from which it receives an average revenue per user (ARPU) of R61. This is down from R66 per user in Q3 2023/24.

Meanwhile, the postpaid subscriber base remained stable at three million, from which Telkom received an ARPU of R185, up from R182 in the same period last year.

“This culminated in the total subscriber base expanding by 21.6% to 24.0 million mobile users, with a blended ARPU of R79 (Q3 FY2024: R86),” said Telkom.

Telkom’s wholesale fibre division, Openserve, recorded a slight revenue decrease of 0.4% year-on-year to R3.1 billion. At the same time, EBITDA grew by 5.4% to R1.07 billion.

Openserve’s homes passed grew by 13.1%, or roughly 155,000 homes, to 1.34 million homes, while homes connected increased by over 100,000 to 667,465 homes.

Telkom said its fibre division had sustained an industry-leading connectivity rate of 49.8%.

“Our ongoing investment in network modernisation continued to set industry standards, achieving uptime of 99.94%, 99.88%, and 99.99% across access transport and core network, respectively,” it said.

The company observed heightened demand for high-speed broadband Internet, pushing up data consumption by 23.7% to 757 petabytes in the quarter.

The table below shows a summary of Telkom South Africa’s financial results for the quarter ended 31 December 2024.