Interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2015

• ghlights

Notes:
* Normalised growth adjusted for trading foreign exchange and at a constant currency using current year as base (collectively 'foreign exchange').
** Growth adjusted for foreign exchange and the change in accounting estimate relating to revenue recognition of un-recharged vouchers in September 2014 in South Africa.
Refer below for a reconciliation of adjustments. All growth rates quoted are year-on-year growth rates unless stated otherwise.

Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO commented:

"It has been a strong start to the year with sustained growth underpinned by network superiority, customer value management excellence and distribution leadership. We lifted Group capital expenditure 5.8% to R6.2 billion, expanding 3G coverage in all our markets. In South Africa, LTE/4G coverage increased from 32.2% to 46.8%. We have already seen the customer experience improve significantly, creating a 17 point lead in Net Promoter Score ('NPS') between us and our nearest competitor.

Group revenue increased 6.4% supported by customer growth of 6.8% to 65.1 million. Group EBITDA growth increased 13.0% due to excellent commercial execution, solid progress with our structured multi-year cost saving programme and a weaker prior year first half comparative. EBITDA growth was also boosted by the savings realised from the several actions we took in the second half last year to reduce costs.

In our International operations, we achieved good customer growth of 10.6%. Service revenue reached double digit growth of 12.4% (10.3%*) stepping up from 7.4% in the second half of last year.

I am most encouraged by the increasing demand for data services as we make devices and data bundles more affordable. We now have 28.3 million data users across the Group, driving a 33.5% increase in data revenue. Our LTE/4G customers in South Africa, now approaching two million, consume almost three times more data as compared with 3G customers.

There are good opportunities ahead of us as only 66% of our monthly active customers in South Africa are using data and our share in fixed services is only a fraction of what it is in mobile. The performance of Vodacom Business in South Africa was particularly strong with underlying service revenue growth of 12.8%, underpinned by new customer wins as well as our mobile customers choosing to purchase fixed services from us as they trust our brand and value network reliability. Neotel, which is pending Competition Tribunal approval, will further enhance our ability to contribute meaningfully to the development of fixed-line services, broadband and fibre to homes and businesses in South Africa.

In the second half, we plan to invest more into fibre and other new growth areas by building the right capability to ensure we sustain growth into the next year."