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Our performance
Our business
Governance review
Administration
Overview
+7.4%
Group service revenue
R66 763 million
+28.5%
Group data revenue
R21 306 million
+12.8%
Group EBITDA
R30 345 million
R12 875
million
Capital expenditure
16.1% of revenue
+21.8%
Group operating free cash flow
R17 054 million
+48.2%
Return on capital employed
revenue growth, ahead of our target. As a fairly efficient operation,
a pure ‘cost cutting’ approach could be over-simplistic and
compromise our ability to deliver excellent service to our
customers. Our main focus has thus been on innovation and
long-term sustainable changes in our cost structure. Examples of
some of these have been offering our customers easier and more
convenient ways to assist themselves on basic queries, via the
My Vodacom App and our focus on improving the root cause of
problems being experienced by our customers, thereby reducing
calls to call centres by approximately 15% year-on-year.
We constantly explore opportunities to improve the efficiencies
in our network. Investing in our own transmission to base stations
reduces our network running costs, enabling us to carry
incremental data at a lower cost than leasing it. We have also
achieved material savings in energy costs through the use of
innovative technologies that reduce our energy usage and
carbon footprint.
We have made valuable progress in optimising our customer
acquisition and distribution costs. In buying back our customer base
from Nashua (Pty) Limited, we have reduced commissions and
deliver services directly to our customers. At the end of this financial
year, we concluded the purchase of our customer base from
Altech Autopage (Pty) Limited, and will realise the benefits
of this transaction in the next financial year.
During the year, we fostered a cost-conscious culture at an
individual employee level through our ‘1000 small things’ initiative,
a business-wide project that encourages employees to develop
cost savings initiatives, identify wastage and use resources
more efficiently.
A portion of our purchases are foreign currency denominated. In
South Africa, we mitigate our exchange rate exposure by fixing our
pricing in rand under our contract conversion schemes and we use
forward exchange contracts to secure exchange rates for extended
periods. In addition, in all our markets we strive to maximise local
procurement where appropriate. This approach has led, for example,
to a proud partnership with Mace productions, through which
we have created employment opportunities for women in a
local community in Buhle Park in Ekurhuleni, sewing branded
promotional items for Vodacom. Albeit small on a Vodacom scale,
we believe that these efforts are making a significant difference
in the lives of the people we touch.
Delivering shareholder returns
Over the past five years, we have returned R57.9 billion in dividends
to our shareholders, maintaining an average dividend yield of 6.2%,
while our share price has risen 102.2% over the same period.
This year, the Board has approved to pay out a final dividend of
400 cents, taking our total dividend to 795 cents, in line with
our dividend policy of paying out at least 90% of HEPS.
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