{"id":422782,"date":"2021-11-15T08:05:52","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T06:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=422782"},"modified":"2021-11-15T08:13:22","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T06:13:22","slug":"strong-data-and-subscriber-growth-for-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business-telecoms\/422782-strong-data-and-subscriber-growth-for-vodacom.html","title":{"rendered":"Strong data and subscriber growth for Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Vodacom has released its interim results for the period between 1 April and 30 September 2021, showing solid subscriber growth in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>It also posted growth in revenue and operating profit, and an increase in average data usage among customers with smart devices.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In South Africa, we delivered service revenue growth of 3.6% driven by connectivity demand, an additional 1.1 million data customers, incremental wholesale revenue and growth in our new services,&#8221; said Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This was an impressive result given the demanding comparative associated with lockdowns in the prior period.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joosub said that Vodacom Business delivered another strong performance, with service revenue increasing by 11.5% to R8.5 billion while revenue generated from financial services in South Africa increased by 15.0% to R1.3 billion.<\/p>\n<p>He said that Vodacom would invest more than R10.5 billion into its network during the current financial year.<\/p>\n<p>This is in addition to the R47 billion Vodacom spent over the past five years alone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key financial figures (South Africa):<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Service revenue: +3.6% to R28.6 billion<\/li>\n<li>Mobile contract revenue: +4.0% to R10.6 billion<\/li>\n<li>Mobile prepaid revenue: \u20130.3% to R12.5 billion<\/li>\n<li>Operating profit: +1.6% to R10.5 billion<\/li>\n<li>Blended ARPU: \u20138.2% to R90<\/li>\n<li>Prepaid ARPU: \u201312.5% to R56<\/li>\n<li>Contract ARPU: +1% to R299<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Key subscriber statistics (South Africa):<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Total subscribers: +6% to 45.4 million<\/li>\n<li>Prepaid subscribers: +6.4% to 39.1 million<\/li>\n<li>Contract subscribers: +3.4% to 6.4 million<\/li>\n<li>Data subscribers: +2.4% to 22.8 million<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Vodacom said that the reported subscriber revenue growth rate was negatively impacted by a R142 million non-cash contribution to service revenue in the prior period related to a loyalty programme provision.<\/p>\n<p>Adjusting for this one-off, underlying service revenue growth was 4.1%.<\/p>\n<p>New services such as financial and digital services, fixed products and the Internet of Things delivered strong growth, contributing R4.0 billion of South Africa&#8217;s service revenue.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Vodacom.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-398231 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Vodacom.jpg\" alt=\"Vodacom\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Vodacom.jpg 800w, https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Vodacom-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Vodacom-640x426.jpg 640w, https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Vodacom-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Regarding the decline in average revenue per user (ARPU), Vodacom said that the average revenue from prepaid users reached R64 in 2020 as subscribers increased usage during South Africa&#8217;s more stringent lockdown restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>As these restrictions eased, prepaid ARPU normalised.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Encouragingly, prepaid ARPU of R56 in the second quarter is higher than pre-Covid levels and up 1.8% quarter-on-quarter, as price transformation initiatives supported incremental usage,&#8221; Vodacom stated.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The combination of ARPU normalisation and subscriber growth resulted in a broadly flat mobile customer prepaid performance in the period.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Adjusting for the R142 million loyalty programme provision release in the prior period, prepaid mobile customer revenue increased 0.8% during the year.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the impact of lockdown restrictions on last year&#8217;s results, which Vodacom said magnified data demand, data traffic increased 13.1% and accelerated to 17.9% in the second quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Quarter-on-quarter, data traffic was up 12.6%.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We added 1.1 million data customers in the period, reaching 22.8 million customers, up 2.4%,&#8221; the operator said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Smart devices were up by 11.1% to 24.5 million while 4G devices increased by 21.5% to 17.2 million. The average usage per smart device increased by 7.3% to 2.2GB per month.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Revenue generated from financial services was up 15.0% to R1.3 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Vodacom said that this revenue growth was underpinned by its Airtime Advance product, where it advanced R6.5 billion in airtime during these six months \u2014 an increase of 14.3%.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Airtime Advanced represented 45.5% of total prepaid recharges in the period,&#8221; Vodacom said.<\/p>\n<p>Insurance revenue increased 11.8%, supported by growth in policies which were up 6.8% to 2.1 million.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business-telecoms\/422638-inside-the-vodacom-deal-to-buy-vumatel-and-dfa.html\">Inside the Vodacom deal to buy Vumatel and DFA<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vodacom showed solid subscriber and contract revenue growth between 1 April and 30 September 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":280697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41906],"tags":[13259,35,1958,41],"class_list":["post-422782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-telecoms","tag-airtime-advance","tag-headline","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422782"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422784,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422782\/revisions\/422784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}