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Vodacom Tanzanian listing in sight

Paula Gilbert
By Paula Gilbert, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 02 Feb 2017
Tanzania requires licensed telcos to list 25% of their authorised share capital on the DSE.
Tanzania requires licensed telcos to list 25% of their authorised share capital on the DSE.

Vodacom is inching closer to a planned listing on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) in Tanzania. Vodacom revealed the latest update on the secondary listing in its trading update for the quarter ended 31 December 2016.

"Vodacom Tanzania submitted its prospectus with the Capital Markets and Securities Authority Tanzania (CMSA) during November 2016 and is awaiting approval before the offering can proceed," Vodacom said in the quarterly update.

This after the Parliament of Tanzania last June passed the Finance Act, 2016 which amended listing requirements under the Electronic and Postal Communication Act. The Act effectively required licensed telecommunications operators to list 25% of their authorised share capital on the DSE within six months from 1 July 2016.

The SA-based company is currently only listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. In November, as part of its interim results, Vodacom said it had communicated its intention to list on the DSE and proposed changes to the listing requirements to government and CMSA.

Tanzania is Vodacom's second biggest market, with 12.4 million active subscribers as at 31 December 2016. In the third quarter of the current financial year, Tanzania grew its subscriber numbers by 0.5%; however, on a year-on-year basis, active customer numbers in Tanzania dropped by 2.3%.

Tanzania has almost 6.5 million active data customers, a 13% increase year-on-year and a 7.7% jump quarter-on-quarter.

South Africa remains Vodacom's biggest market where it has almost 36.4 million customers. Vodacom's international operations - which comprise Tanzania, the DRC, Mozambique and Lesotho - saw active customer numbers in the third quarter drop 7.5% year-on-year, to 28.8 million. This was as a result of disconnections during the fourth quarter of the prior year, in compliance with customer registration requirements - the majority of which were in the DRC.

Average revenue per user (ARPU) in Tanzania is R40 per month, which is the lowest in rand terms out of all of the markets in which Vodacom operates. In Lesotho, ARPU is R66 per month; in DRC, it is R48; and in Mozambique, R41 per month. In SA, ARPU of subscribers varies from R64 for prepaid customers to R414 for contract customers.

In total, Vodacom's international operations saw revenue drop by 8.9% year-on-year in the third quarter, to R4.3 billion. Service revenue declined 8.2% to R4.2 billion for the four countries, impacted by the improvement of the rand against mainly the US dollar and continued weakness in the Mozambican metical.

"Challenging conditions in the DRC were offset by a better performance in Tanzania and sustained growth in Mozambique, resulting in a 3.4% increase in normalised international service revenue," says Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub.

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