South Africa’s leading telecoms company, Telkom has said that the lion’s share of its income in the year ended 31st March 2021 was made up by “next-generation technologies” like its mobile business. Growth, driven by the mobile business, saw EBITDA grow 11.7% to R11 973 million, with EBITDA margin expanding by 2.8 ppts to 27.7%.
Despite a challenging environment, Group revenue grew 0.4% to R43 222 million. Mobile business revenue growth now more than offsets the anticipated structural decline in fixed-voice revenue and revenue pressures from COVID-19. The results showed a change in revenue mix, with legacy fixed-voice income now contributing only 15% to the business.
Notwithstanding the challenging trading environment, the Group delivered underlying earnings growth of 88.1% to R2 622 million, growing BEPS and HEPS by 89.6% and 53.4% respectively compared to the prior year.
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Telkom Group CEO, Sipho Maseko says “our mobile business continued its growth trajectory as we surpassed 15 million subscribers during the year, carrying even more data traffic in 4G and 4,5G, as well as commencing our 5G rollout.”
He adds, “Allocating capital to a data-led and fibre-enabled mobile networks – a growth area of our business – successfully prepared us for the significant increase in data demand and mobile broadband services as more people worked, did business and studied from home.”
Mobile broadband traffic increased 53.2%, resulting in mobile data revenue growing by 41.0% and underpinning the 34.5% increase in mobile service revenue to R16 938 million.
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Telkom’s BCX unit suffered a decline in revenue as the national lockdown and the work-from-home response impacted fixed-voice revenues from enterprise customers. Information technology (IT) revenue also came under pressure as corporates deferred capital expenditure (CAPEX) and delayed projects given the increased levels of uncertainty.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry