PREPAID CUSTOMERS
SIM cull knocks Vodacom’s SA revenue
SA’s largest mobile operator struggles at home but its African operations perform well
SA’s largest mobile operator Vodacom’s share price fell as much as 8% on Thursday after reporting a decline in revenue at its SA operation, where it has cut off 337,000 inactive prepaid SIM cards. The operator said the "one- off" prepaid customers and a tighter economy had resulted in a drop in earnings. Revenue in SA was down 0.9% to R13.9bn for the three months to end-December, after Vodacom reduced its customers 0.6% to 43.8-million. The group did this because these customers had only subscribed to benefit from one-off promotional voice and data offers. "Prepaid customer growth was resilient, while efforts to reduce one-off use of SIM cards started to take effect, resulting in lower gross additions in the quarter," Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub said.
Though the cut in prepaid customers had knocked revenue, World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck said the results were also affected by a change in consumer behaviour. This could be seen in consumers reducing their out-of-bundle data ...
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