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We continue to see positive outcomes from our segmented acquisition strategy.
Our Youth proposition, NXT LVL, has now attracted over 3.3 million new and existing
Youth customers. The expansion of our new Siyakha platform is helping improve the
lives of customers, through products such as zero-rated career portals, Facebook flex,
free health information for expectant mothers and prepaid funeral cover. These
propositions, supported by personalised value offers through our ‘Just 4 You’ platform
have seen us attracting 4.5 million new customers this year, closing at 41.6 million, up
12.1%. Prepaid customers increased 4.3 million, up 13.4%, supporting the 6.4% prepaid
customer revenue growth. We added 229 000 contract customers. Progress on our
pricing transformation strategy has resulted in short-term pressure on contract ARPU,
which declined 4.4% to R390. This was as a result of higher roll over of unused data
bundles as we continue to migrate customers to ‘more value’ contracts, with 43.4% of
the base now signed up for these contracts. ARPU was also impacted by changes in
deal structures in the first half of the year, and a reduction of the out-of-bundle data
rates in October 2017.
Our industry leading application of Big Data and machine learning, created to deliver
personalised bundle offers based on customer behaviour, continues to differentiate us
from our competitors. Through our ‘Just 4 You’ platform we have accelerated the
uptake of bundle offers, driving the sale of 2.3 billion bundles in the year, up 51.3%.
Of these, 62.2% of bundle purchases are made through the platform. Customers using
bundles have grown 13.9% to 18.7 million.
South Africa delivered a robust performance,
despite ongoing data pricing transformation and a
low economic growth environment. Service revenue
increased 4.9% to R54.6 billion, supported by strong
customer additions, a higher contribution from data
revenue and growth in Enterprise services. Revenue
grew strongly by 8.1% to R70.0 billion, as a result of
equipment revenue growth of 15.2%, underpinned
by smart device sales which constitute 70.0% of
total devices sold, in line with our strategy of driving
the uptake of smart devices.
Our segment performance
South Africa
46
Vodacom Group Limited
Integrated report for the year ended 31 March 2018