In an almost completely direct contrast to MTN’s current situation, Vodacom have released their interim financial results for the six-month period ending 30 September. And the results are looking good (and we’re sure that they didn’t time their announcement to release today at all).
Operating profit for the company has increased over the last six months, up by 7.8% to R10.2 billion. South African revenues went up by 5.1%, with service revenues up by 2.9% to R24 billion. Vodacom’s total active South African customers reached 33.7 million users, adding 1.6 million customers added in the first half of this year.
This brings the company’s group active customers to 65.1 million users, counting the increases seen in other areas where Vodacom is present.
Vodacom also boasted about having increased 3G and 4G/LTE coverage in all of their markets, with the latter improving from 32.2% to 46.8% in South Africa specifically.
Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub said “It has been a strong start to the year with sustained growth underpinned by network superiority, customer value management excellence and distribution leadership…”
“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.”
“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.”