Capitec Connect makes R35 million

Capitec Connect generated R35 million in net transaction and commission income for the period 1 March 2023 to 29 February 2024.

This represents a massive R42 million year-on-year increase, with Capitec Connect recording a R7 million loss the year before.

However, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) only launched on 26 September 2022.

The R7 million loss therefore represents its first five months of operation.

Capitec CEO Gerrie Fourie revealed the figures in his presentation of the bank’s annual results on 23 April 2024.

“I’m very excited about Capitec Connect,” Fourie said.

He said Capitec Connect would be launching “quite a lot” of new products in the coming months.

Fourie also said their MVNO is an important component of their overall strategy as it helps them understand their clients better.

He said they would use data analytics from Capitec Connect to optimise their client experience.

Capitec Connect runs on Cell C’s MVNO platform. Its network infrastructure is operated by MTN.

Capitec made waves in 2022 when it launched cellular services promising mobile data that never expires.

In reality, it had launched a prepaid offering with really low out-of-bundle tariffs.

Subscribers paid for service with airtime at the following rates:

• Voice calls — R0.90 per minute
• Data — R0.045 per megabyte (R45 per GB)
• SMS — R0.25 per message

This offered customers excellent value for money as long as they only used a few gigabytes every month. However, other operators quickly become more affordable above a certain amount of usage.

To address this gap, Capitec launched its first monthly data bundle product just under a year later, offering 10GB of data per month for R199.

MyBroadband asked Capitec how many active SIMs they have and what their average revenue per user was, but it did not answer our questions.

Capitec CEO Gerrie Fourie previously declined to provide these figures, saying it was competitor-sensitive information.