South Africa’s biggest mobile network operator Vodacom continued to grow subscribers and revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to its latest trading update.
The operator’s South African customer base grew to 45.7 million customers by the end of December 2021, an increase of 3.3% from the same time in 2020.
Coupled with significant demand for connectivity, this boosted service revenue by 4.5% to R14.95 billion compared to R14.31 billion a year earlier.
R5.6 billion of this came from contract customer service revenue, which increased 7.6% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.
“The growth was supported by contract customer net additions of over 81,000 in the quarter and ARPU [average revenue per user] growth of 3.1% to R302,” Vodacom stated.
Vodacom Business was also buoyed by demand for its work-from-home connectivity solutions.
“Consumer contract posted 2.3% growth supported by attractive packages offering customers larger data allocations to facilitate increased usage,” Vodacom said.
In the prepaid segment in South Africa, the operator added 263,000 new customers.
However, prepaid customer revenue remained flat, which Vodacom pinned on relaxed lockdown measures.
“In the prior-year period, prepaid ARPU reached R59 as customers increased usage during the more stringent lockdown restrictions,” Vodacom stated.
“As these restrictions eased, prepaid ARPU normalised and in the current period was R57.”
This was still above pre-Covid levels and an increase of 1.8% quarter-on-quarter.
Another key growth area has been in IoT (Internet of Things) products, with connections up 11.2% to 6.2 million and adjusted revenue growth at 30% to R0.3 billion.
Vodacom said it invested R2.3 billion in network infrastructure during the quarter, with a focus on adding capacity to manage increased demand and improve the customer
experience.
The Vodacom Group, which includes its international markets, saw service revenue climb by 5.3% to R20.66 billion.
