Vodacom Group Limited trading update for the quarter ended 31 December 2019

Highlights

• Group revenue up 6.6% (6.1%*) supported by Group service revenue growth of 5.7% (5.2%*).
• We added 484 000 customers in South Africa, supported by a successful Summer campaign. In our International operations we added 1.7 million customers during the period.
• South Africa revenue and service revenue growth rates improved to 5.9% and 4.6% respectively, supported by increased data uptake as we continue to transform pricing, as well as improved performance from our Summer campaign.
• International operations continued to perform well, delivering service revenue growth of 9.0% (7.1%*), with strong growth in data and M-Pesa revenues.

Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO commented:

Our sustained investment programme, aimed at delivering a better experience for customers in each of the countries where we operate, continues to yield results. This is reflected in the additional 2 million customers that we connected during the quarter, contributing to growth of 6.6% in revenue for the Vodacom Group. We now serve over 117 million customers1 across the Group.

As expected, growth trends improved across a number of metrics in South Africa following the significant impacts over the past year from our ongoing pricing transformation strategy. These included substantial cuts in out-of-bundle tariffs and lower bundle prices, resulting in a circa 50% decline in effective data prices since March 2016.

A highly successful Summer campaign, which delivered 334 million free rewards to 17 million customers, contributed to an uplift in activity across our customer base. This increase in data customers and usage is evidence of our success in transforming data pricing in South Africa. Notable contributions from our Financial Services and Enterprise businesses saw service revenue in South Africa rise by 4.6% despite a subdued economy.

Notes:

1. Including Safaricom Plc customers as at 30 September 2019.
The quarterly information has not been audited or reviewed by Vodacom’s external auditors.
All growth rates quoted are year-on-year and refer to the quarter ended 31 December 2019 compared to the quarter ended 31 December 2018.
Certain financial information presented in this results announcement constitutes pro-forma financial information in terms of the JSE Listings Requirements. The applicable criteria on the basis of which this pro-forma financial information has been prepared is set out in the supplementary information on pages 14 to 15.
The pro-forma financial information has not been audited or reviewed or otherwise reported on by external auditors.
Amounts marked with an * in this document represent normalised growth which presents performance on a comparable basis. This excludes merger and acquisition activity and adjusting for trading foreign exchange and foreign currency fluctuation on a constant currency basis (using the current year as base).

View full trading update for the quarter ended 31 December 2019 [331KB]