Vodacom expects higher second half profit

Vodacom Group’s half-year headline earnings fell 9.5% due to start-up losses in Ethiopia and higher finance costs, but it expects core profit to improve in the second half, it said on Monday.

Vodacom is part of a consortium led by Kenya’s Safaricom and including Britain’s Vodafone Group that entered the Ethiopian market last month, becoming the first private operator in one of Africa’s largest telecommunications markets.

It has launched its network in 16 cities in Ethiopia, with plans to expand services to 25 by April 2023, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub said.

That expansion led the company to incur start-up losses in Ethiopia of R458-million. Higher finance costs of R391-million also dented earnings.

The company, majority-owned by Vodafone, said headline earnings per share fell to R4.57 in the six months ended 30 September from R5.05 a year earlier.

Group operating profit decreased 5.6% to R13.3-billion on modest growth in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation due to higher operating costs.

On Friday, Safaricom, which is partly owned by Vodacom and Vodafone, also reported a drop in its first-half net income, citing the network rollout in Ethiopia. This resulted in Safaricom’s contribution to Vodacom’s operating profit falling 7.3% to R1.5-billion, Joosub said.

Group chief financial officer Raisibe Morathi told investors that Vodacom expects an improvement in normalised core earnings growth in the financial second half as it accelerates cost cuts and growth in operating costs eases.

Read: Vodacom in record network spending in South Africa

Some of these initiatives, which are also aimed at taming inflationary pressures, include renegotiating wholesale prices with oil companies and sourcing electricity from renewable independent power producers, she said.  — (c) 2022 Reuters

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