Author: Gugu Lourie

Telkom on Monday warned investors that it headline earnings per share (HEPS) for the six months to end-September 2022 will be cut by 55% compared to the prior interim period in 2021. HEPS is South Africa’s main profit gauge. Telkom advised shareholders that reported HEPS and reported basic earnings per share are expected to decrease by between 45% and 55% compared to the prior interim period ended 30 September 2021. Telkom attributed the expected loss mobile postpaid vs prepaid mix changing which had the impact of deferring revenue over 24 – 36 months, as well as the cost base increasing.…

Vodacom announced today that its Financial Services business reported a 19.2% rise in revenue to R4.4 billion fuelled by insurance business, with policies up 19.4% to 2.6 million and a recovery in Airtime Advance revenue growth. The Vodafone-owned company added that normalised M-Pesa revenue growth accelerated to 20.4% in the second quarter, as Tanzania lapped mobile money levies imposed in July 2021 and its new financial services continued to scale. New financial services such as loans and merchant services contributed more than half of M-Pesa revenue growth in the period. The group said Safaricom generated financial services revenue of R7.9…

Vodacom announced today that it has invested over R2 billion in batteries alone to enhance the resilience of our network so that we keep customers connected during extended periods of loadshedding. “At the same time, we continue to work closely with Eskom to find a renewable energy solution for the benefit of our planet and customers, having announced in September 2022 an in-principle agreement with South Africa’s energy utility to pilot a programme that would see Vodacom South Africa source its electricity from renewable independent power producers and contribute this into the national grid,” Shameel Joosub, Vodacom’s CEO informed investors…

The state’s role in terms of what we call regulation should change to be an enabler. This is the view of Andile Ngcaba, the executive chairman and founder of private equity firm Convergence Partners, noting that the telecommunications industry should strive to remove the word regulation in-laws, vocabulary, and terminologies. Ngcaba participated in a roundtable on “Looking Back, Going Forward: How Africa’s Tech History Contains the Roots of its Future” at Africa Tech Fest and AfricaCom 2022 in Cape Town. He was joined by Nic Rudnick – CEO of Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Nika Naghavi – Executive director of MNOs at…

Liquid Intelligent Technologies, which is owned by Strive Masiyiwa, is spending more than R350m into delivering Software Defined Network (SDN) offering known as Dataport. The client-controlled network can be scaled and customised to suit the datacentre and SME user market, and South Africa’s 20 000 connected buildings. SDN connections are typically used to connect enterprise networks, including branch offices and data centres, over local and long distances. Users have complete control over their operations through an efficient, easy-to-use web portal, from choosing destinations, speed and bandwidths, managing traffic demand, checking costs, and more. With Dataport, customers have complete oversight of…

The first regional Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) adoption in Africa has to be led through policies, said Anderson Amlamba, director of the AU’s Management Information System. Speaking at the launch of “Africa IPv6 Development White Paper” by the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), African Union (AU) and Huawei at the 4th Broadband Africa Forum at AfricaCom 2022, Amlamba said that’s the only way Africa will be able to get IPv6 adoption through all the different industry sectors and verticals. This first regional IPv6 white paper on the African continent systematically analyses the development of IPv6 in Africa and shares the…

MTN SA service revenue grew by 3.5% in the third quarter to end-September 2022, impacted by loadshedding and concessions to support the Cell C recapitalisation. Service revenue in the prepaid consumer business unit (CBU) grew by 0.4%, with postpaid CBU increasing by 4.2%. The enterprise business unit (EBU) continues to deliver strong double-digit growth of 19.7%. Furthermore, the wholesale business delivered 0.7% growth despite revenue concessions amounting to R82 million on the Cell C national roaming agreement geared to enabling the conclusion of their recapitalisation. In the nine months to September 2022, MTN SA grew its subscriber base by over…

MTN announced today that its FinTech business saw revenue rose by 12.9%, with Mobile Money (MoMo) active monthly users up by 23.3% in the third quarter of 2022. In Q3 2022, MTN recorded a 32.7% increase in transaction volumes to 9.5 billion transactions, with transaction value up by 12.1% to $166.7 billion. The number of active merchants accepting MoMo payments increased by 64.4% to over 1.0 million, and the total value of MoMo merchant payments rose by 64.9% to $10.8 billion. In BankTech, MTN facilitated a total loan value of $1 billion, a 57.9% year-on-year increase, as it capitalised on…

MTN GlobalConnect, a digital wholesale and infrastructure services company and an operating company in the MTN Group, announced today that it has signed $28.2 million or R516 million fixed external infrastructure deals. MTN GlobalConnect is driving MTN’s fibreco ambitions in Africa. The telco is planning to demerge its Fibre and FinTech businesses and bring third-party investors to unlock value trapped in the company. External revenue grew by 16.9% year-on-year to $247.9 million or R4.5 billion, with Mobility revenue up by 18.3%. “Building scale infrastructure assets across Africa remained a key priority as MTN GlobalConnect expanded terrestrial fibre into its markets,” MTN informed investors. “We rolled…

MTN announced today that its Nigerian operation has added 5.7 million new susbcribers in nine months ended 30 September 2022 The telco said mobile subscribers rose by 9.7% to 74.1 million MTN aaded that active data users increased by 14.6% to 38 million, adding 3.7 million new active users. The operation’s active fintech subscribers rose by 68.7% to 11.2 million or 1.8 million active MoMo wallets since the launch of MoMo Payment Service Bank (PSB). “The investments we make to enhance the quality and coverage of our network continue to yield positive results, driving higher data usage and an expansion…