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Vodacom grows revenue and customers

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Vodacom’s revenue grew strongly at 6.3% to R86 billion and added seven million customers during the year under review. The mobile company presented its annual results ending March 2018.

It says it added 4.5 million customers in South Africa and 2.5 million in its International operations.

Its acquisition Safaricom added 1.4 million customers, in combination the mobile company says it now reached over 103 million customers across the Group.

Strong device sales helped push Vodacom’s sales in South Africa. Its revenue for the country accelerated by 8.1% while service revenue increased to R54 billion.

The Group says it spent a significant amount of money to improve the quality of its network. CEO Shameel Joosub  says they will continue to invest.

“You have we to continue to invest and in South Africa we spend 8.9 billion so isn’t a lack of investment coming in, for prices to come down, we need spectrum so the investment is still happening.”

Joosub says Big Data led innovations contributed to robust demand for personalised bundles and a 4% growth in service revenue. Strong device sales, cost optimisation and the effective execution of price transformation played a major role.

Joosub says he is optimistic about the group’s growth going forward.  “We still need to see the impact of the VAT increases and what that going to be on the economy and I think there is a lot more positive sentiment, a strong Rand is good from the perspective that you can make your capital go a little further.”

However, the Group says new pricing rules will have an impact on revenues in the future. Its revenue was impacted from reduction on out-of-bundle data prices.

Vodacom has reduced voice and data prices by more than 30% in the past three years.  International operations continued to improve. Its Mozambique, Lesotho, Tanzania and DRC operations showed good momentum.

Joosub says they are encouraged by renewed economic and political stability in most its operations in South Africa and Kenya.

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