Vodacom announced on Friday that its revenue climbed 36.9% to R35.7 billion for the qaurter to end-June 2023, lifted by Vodafone Egypt and financial services.
The Vodafone-owned company completed the acqusition of Vodafone Egypt acquisition in December 2022, presents a unique opportunity to advance the company’s multiproduct strategy, called the System of Advantage.
This strategy aims to deliver diversified, differentiated offerings to our customers, further strengthening and growing its relationships with them.
Group service revenue grew 43.8% in the quarter to almost R29 billion, positively impacted by the acquisition of Vodafone Egypt and rand depreciation of almost 20% against our basket of International currencies.
Excluding the contribution of Vodafone Egypt, Vodacom Group service revenue growth was 9.8% or 4.3% on a normalised basis, supported by a resilient performance in South Africa.
“Our medium-term targets include Vodafone Egypt on a pro forma and constant currency basis, as if it was owned from 1 April 2022. On a target comparable basis, Group service revenue growth was 9.0% in the quarter, at the higher end of our medium-term range,” said Vodacom.
“This reflects good growth from Vodafone Egypt of 27.6% in local currency and strong growth in Group new services. In aggregate, our new services, which include digital and financial, fixed and IoT amounted to R5.7 billion and contributed 19.8% of Group service revenue, up from 18.8% in the first quarter of the prior year.”
Furthermore, Vodacom reported that Financial services revenue reached R3.billion, up 46.2% (14.2%).
In South Africa, growth was supported by strong momentum in insurance policies.
In International, normalised M-Pesa revenue grew 13.7%* in the first quarter, supported by Tanzania and the
DRC. New financial services such as loans and merchant services contributed almost 60% of M-Pesa revenue growth in the quarter.
Vodafone Egypt’s financial services revenue more than doubled in local currency, supported by strong user growth.
“Our financial services strategy is based on a dual-sided ecosystem across consumers and merchants, bringing these segments together through exceptional and personalised experiences relating to entertainment, e-commerce, payments, savings, investments, lending and insurance services,” said Vodacom.
“As key drivers of this strategy, our two super-apps – VodaPay and M-Pesa – integrate our own products and services with the best offerings from our partners. In South Africa, our super-app, VodaPay, reached 6.7 million downloads and launched free deposits, added ‘send money’ and cash-out services in the quarter.
“Alongside the super-app roll-out, our active merchant base continued to scale meaningfully in South Africa and across our International operations.”
Vodacom said in South Africa, active merchants reached 9 680, up 140.0%. Our merchant base across our International operations was up three-fold to 234 000.
“This growth reflects our focus on scaling a dual-sided ecosystem as we expand our addressable commission pool beyond peer-to-peer payments and withdrawals into both online and offline commerce,” said Vodacom.
“Our mobile money platforms, including Safaricom, processed US$360.6 billion of transaction value over the last twelve months, up 5.8%, representing clear leadership in the African fintech space.”
