eBusiness Weekly
Sibongile Khumalo
Vodacom’s revenue increased by 4.5 percent to R102 billion in the 2022 financial year, as data traffic and a demand for mobile money grew, the company’s results showed.
In South Africa, data traffic was up 19.2 percent on the year – and accelerated by 24.3 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the previous year. The company added 1.8 million data customers to reach 23.5 million users. In total, its subscribers increased by 5.9 million to 129.6 million during the reporting period.
South Africa’s service revenue grew 3.8 percent to R58.5 billion and financial services revenue reached R7.6 billion, up 10.8 percent.
Data services have become a major income contributor to mobile companies and the operator, which is the country’s largest mobile network service provider, is expanding its network infrastructure to include a proposed 30 percent stake in the fibre assets managed by Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH). CIVH owns Dark Fibre Africa and Vumatel.
Vodacom has an option of increasing its stake to 40 percent and the company said its participation in the venture would allow it to “gain exposure to highly attractive and fast-growing businesses”.
The latest financial statement shows that company had also ramped up its spending on network infrastructure, with R11.1 billion invested to expand network capacity to meet additional demand for data during the reporting period.
The expenditure is a 10.6 percent increase from the previous financial year.
CEO Shameel Joosub said Vodacom’s investment in network infrastructure to cope with significant increases in mobile data traffic volumes underpinned the uptick in group service revenue.
“In South Africa, revenue grew by 5.3 percent to R80.8 billion on the back of growth in our new services, continued demand for connectivity and incremental wholesale revenue,” said Joosub.
Net profit increased by 3.9 percent to R17.7 billion, and the operator posted a full-year dividend of R8.50 per share. A final dividend of R4.30 was declared.
Vodacom is making an impact in fintech services with platforms such as M-Pesa and its so-called “super app” Vodapay. M-Pesa, which is a mobile money service, has 47.1 million customers in the DRC, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania and processed transactions valued at $324.6 billion (around R5 trillion) during the year.
Jossub said that the impact of the newly acquired additional spectrum by the company in South Africa would accelerate rural network coverage, fast-track the roll-out 5G network and result in faster data connectivity.
Vodacom’s share price lost more than 2 percent on Monday morning.
