As Vodacom's international operations move closer to accounting for half its customer base, the gains are increasingly showing in the operator's numbers.
Vodacom, SA's largest cellphone operator, this morning said revenue in the three months to December gained 10.5%, to R20.2 billion. Stripping out the effects of the weaker rand, its top line grew 7.9%.
Group service revenue, which is income generated by its network, gained 6.4% - or 3.4% on a normalised basis - to R16.2 billion. However, this was mostly thanks to gains in its international operations, which saw service revenue improve 32.6% (15.1% normalised) to R3.7 billion, as local service revenue continued to battle to make gains, gaining a mere 0.6%, to R12.6 billion.
In SA, service revenue trends improved for the third quarter in a row, thanks to strong data growth and income from prepaid customers. However, this figure would have been boosted 3.4% if lower termination rates were stripped out.
CEO Shameel Joosub says the "international businesses continue to make an increasingly significant contribution to the group". Vodacom has 56 million customers.
Vodacom's international customers - from Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo - now account for almost 45% of its customer base. Although the average revenue per user is lower than in its local operations, these geographies are seen as growth markets.
Less talking
Data continued its gains and now accounts for 22.2% of service revenue, at R3.6 billion.
Locally, data revenue gained 31.2% and now accounts for 23.6% to service revenue compared to 18.1% a year ago. "We have increased the adoption of data bundles and integrated price plans which offer better value to our customers; as a result the effective price per MB declined by 16.2%," says Vodacom.
In the three months to December, the group added 600 000 smartphones to its network, taking the total to 7.2 million active smartphones. Average monthly data use per smartphone grew 83.5%, to 254MB a month.
Its international operations grew data revenue 110.5%, a figure that includes income from M-Pesa, while active data customers gained 59.4%, to 7.5 million. Vodacom now has 5.8 million active M-Pesa customers.
Joosub says "data revenue more than doubled with data traffic now three times higher than a year ago".
Ovum analyst Richard Hurst says Vodacom's numbers show the changing nature of the cellular market, with data income gaining pace at the expense of voice revenue. He says operators still have some leeway to offer new data services as the higher-margin voice service continues to slow.
Hurst adds there is also still growth in Africa, although this is tapering slightly, which is to be expected.
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