{"id":611973,"date":"2025-09-25T13:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=611973"},"modified":"2025-09-25T13:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T11:19:09","slug":"cell-c-moving-backwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business-telecoms\/611973-cell-c-moving-backwards.html","title":{"rendered":"Cell C moving backwards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Jorge Mendes took the reins at Cell C in 2023, he said they wanted to reach 15% revenue market share in South Africa. However, the company is moving backwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendes was appointed as the CEO of Cell C on 1 July 2023. Before that, he was chief officer of the consumer business at Vodacom South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after he started his new position, Mendes held a media briefing where he told journalists that they wanted to reach 15% revenue market share in South Africa to become sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, Cell C had already significantly reduced costs, including retrenching most of its staff and switching off its radio access network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendes said they were working on their new strategy, which would require a minimum of 15% revenue market share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe would be profitable before reaching 15% market share, but that would be a solid position to be in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendes told journalists that Cell C was set to shake up the South African mobile industry with innovative new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also promised it would not be business as usual at Cell C and that the company would be different going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to build an amazing culture. Our employees and partners must love to work with Cell C,\u201d Mendes said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the challenges, he said Cell C still has brand value, which they will build upon to make it a brand that South Africans truly love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCell C must become a real purpose organisation that adds value just beyond a SIM card and a tariff plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In mid-2023, Mendes promised Cell C would be a different organisation in the next 18 to 24 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time to assess Cell C\u2019s performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It has been more than 24 months since Mendes shared his strategy and target with the media, and it is time to take stock of Cell C\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cell C recently published its latest financial results with investors, which showed that the mobile operator is struggling to gain market share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of climbing towards its target of 15%, Cell C\u2019s market share has declined since Mendes took the reins at the operator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Cell C\u2019s share of the South African telecommunications market, which includes Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom, stood at 8.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, when Jorge Mendes took the reins as Cell C\u2019s new CEO, the company\u2019s market share stood at 6.3%. Today, it is only 5.6%, well below Mendes\u2019 target of 15%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Cell C to reach its 15% market share target, it must first address the challenges it faces in increasing revenue and then outperform Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, Cell C has not shown that it was able to outperform the larger South African telecommunications players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The charts below show Cell C\u2019s revenue market share in the South African telecommunications market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jorge Mendes took the reins at Cell C in 2023, he said they wanted to reach 15% revenue market share in South Africa. However, the company is moving backwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341111,"featured_media":594533,"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":[355,58256,42,109,41],"class_list":["post-611973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-telecoms","tag-cell-c","tag-jorge-mendes","tag-mtn","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611973"}],"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\/341111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611973"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612042,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611973\/revisions\/612042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}