Johannesburg – Serame Taukobong has been appointed as Telkom’s new group chief executive, the company confirmed today in a statement.
Sunday World reported on Sunday that Taukobong was leading the race to replace Sipho Maseko as the new Telkom boss.
He will start his new role in July next year when Maseko officially steps down.
Telkom in a statement said Maseko and Taukobong will work together for the remainder of Maeko’s tenure to ensure orderly transition and stability of the business.
“During this transition period, Serame will continue to have oversight of the Telkom Consumer Business. A recruitment process for his successor at the Telkom Consumer Business will commence immediately. Serame joined Telkom on 01 June 2018. He has extensive experience in telecommunications having spent approximately 10 years at MTN where he held several senior roles which included Chief Operating Officer and later CEO of MTN Ghana,” the statement reads in part.
“As CEO of the Telkom Consumer Business, the Mobile business customer base grew three-folds to 15 million and its revenue almost doubled to R20 billion within a 3-year period. Under his leadership, Telkom Mobile has become the third largest mobile business in South Africa,’ the statement concludes.
Ofentse Dazela, director for pricing research at Africa Analysis, said Taukobong was a good appointment, but that challenges lie ahead for him such as catching up with MTN and Vodacom on 5G rollout.
“The exciting part is that the new CEO has opportunity to unlock more value by unbundling the group’s businesses and list them separately. Considering that the big driver of the valuation is the market sentiment on the Telkom share price. The current market sentiment shows that there is concern over the Telkom Group. Possibly, it’s the fixed line market drag with Telkom’s exposure to the fixed line business, increasing competition to Openserve and increasing competition to BCX. Unbundling Telkom Group and listing the entities separately would likely unlock significant value for Telkom as the different businesses would trade at different valuations,” he said.
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