Telecommunications group Telkom is relying largely on the robust growth of its mobile business segment to offset record losses of subscribers in its traditional money spinner fixed line business.
Telkom reported today that group revenue grew 3% to R43 billion in the financial year, ended March 2020, despite a 22.2% decline in fixed voice revenue. The group also reported a 66.4% decline profits, citing the impact of once-off items.
Telkom said pre-paid customers grew 20.8% to 9.4 million, with net additions of 1.6 million in the year under review.
However, the company’s Telkom’s fixed-line subscribers declined from more than 2,2 million in March 2019 to just 1,6 million in March this year.
Sipho Maseko, Group CEO of Telkom, said the company’s performance for the year under review depicts the evolution of technologies and revenue mix.
“Group revenue grew 3.0% to R43.0 billion despite a 22.2% decline in fixed voice revenue. The ongoing capex investment enabled Telkom to grow new revenue streams and showed growth in evolving technology, offsetting the traditional business decline,” Maseko said.
“The mobile business grew 54.4% in service revenue from a higher base to R12.6 billion to remain the fastest growing mobile business in South Africa with 12 million customers. This was underpinned by our ongoing network investment and successful broadband-led proposition, which continue to resonate well with customers,” he added.
Telkom also reported that the connectivity rate for fibre to the home had improved from 38.4% in the prior year to 48.2% in the current year – the highest in the market.
