Tuesday,
Financial Snapshot of interim results 2018
Johannesburg, 21 August 2018 - Cell C today released its interim results for the period ended 30 June 2018, signalling how South Africa’s third largest telecommunications service provider is on track to deliver substantial growth through its strategic initiatives.
“Following the measures put in place as part of our turnaround strategy, we are seeing both a satisfactory financial performance to date and increased value offering for our customers. We have focused our efforts on innovation and improving our network coverage and quality as well as customer experience and will continue to build on our strong foundation with revenue projected to perform promisingly,” says Cell C Chief Executive Officer, Jose Dos Santos.
Despite difficult economic conditions, Cell C has managed to grow its total active subscriber base by 600 000 customers to 16.3 million, resulting in total revenue increasing to R7.8 billion from R7.4 billion the previous year. Service revenue increased 11%, from R6.2 billion to R6.9 billion. EBITDA increased 16% to R2.4 billion.
Meeting the demands of a data-first consumer has been an important focus for the business. Data revenue was up 20%, with data traffic up 62% compared to the same period last year. Data revenue now makes up 52% of mobile revenue compared to 46% the previous year, despite the effective price of data per MB decreasing by more than 28% year on year.
Cell C’s MVNO strategy delivered strong growth in the wholesale division, specifically driven by customer data usage which generated the bulk of the revenue growth. Wholesale revenue increased by 51%, to R486 million and MVNO subscribers increased by 31%, from 1.3 million to 1.7 million.
“Our strong performance in service revenue has offset the voice traffic revenue, which declined by 6% for the period. This was expected as consumers continue to switch to alternative voice services resulting in a 10% decline in voice traffic,” says Dos Santos.
Cell C reported a net loss of R645 million, an improvement of 33% compared to R968 million in the previous year. Foreign exchange and financial instrument exposure contributed to the net loss.
Operationally, Cell C is also on track to improve both its network coverage and quality through a build and buy strategy.
“Earlier this year we concluded a far-reaching roaming agreement with MTN to complement our own high quality network. The agreement provides our customers with wider 3G and 4G coverage, as well as automatic and seamless roaming access. This means that where a customer is on a call that happens to switch from a Cell C tower to a MTN tower, the call will not be dropped. This agreement allows us to now increase our capital investment during H2 in areas where we’ve chosen to build coverage and capacity,” says Dos Santos.
The rollout of this multi-billion-rand long-term roaming agreement has already begun and areas currently benefiting from this deal include Witbank, Middelburg, Secunda, Ermelo and Standerton. The implementation is expected to conclude by November and as a result, 4G access will increase from 33% population coverage to 80%. The company’s 2G and 3G population coverage is at 99% and 96% respectively.
The Cell C fibre-to-the-home offering C-Fibre, has also seen considerable growth for the period with over 100% in both base and revenue growth. New C-Fibre connections increased from 3 733 in the same period to 16 425. The offering was launched in 2016 with open access Fibre Network Operators (FNO) and has continued to grow by launching on four new open access networks earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Cell C continues to provide value based products and services, and disruption in the market, with its entertainment platform, black. Uptake by customers is growing steadily and the business is pleased with the progress.
“Cell C will continue to focus on providing value based products and services to the South African consumer and we are continuously looking at strategic partnerships to enhance the value that we offer customers,” says Dos Santos.
Cell C is a leading mobile provider in South Africa offering a wide range of products and services, including voice, data, device and SIM deals to more than 20 million customers.
