On Monday, Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub stated that the ongoing load shedding in South Africa had devastated the country’s economy and telecommunications industry. The energy crisis in South Africa contributed to a 6.4% decrease in Vodacom Group’s full-year earnings per share. Other factors that contributed to this decline include higher interest charges, start-up losses in Ethiopia, merger and acquisition costs, and increased inflation across the company’s markets. Joosub described the power situation as critical and disastrous for the company.
Since 2020, Vodacom South Africa has invested over R4-billion in backup power solutions such as batteries and generators. In the past financial year, the company also spent an additional R300-million on diesel, security, and maintenance costs. In response to the growing load-shedding problem in South Africa, Vodacom Group increased its investment in power resilience to ensure network availability. This led to an accelerated demand for data, which grew by 45.4% year on year in the fourth quarter.
Received message. On Monday, Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub stated that the ongoing load shedding in South Africa had devastatingly impacted the country’s economy and telecommunications industry.
The energy crisis in South Africa contributed to a 6.4% decrease in Vodacom Group’s full-year earnings per share. Other factors that contributed to this decline include higher interest charges, start-up losses in Ethiopia, merger and acquisition costs, and increased inflation across the company’s markets.
Joosub described the power situation as critical and disastrous for the company. Since 2020, Vodacom South Africa has invested over R4-billion in backup power solutions such as batteries and generators. In the past financial year, the company also spent an additional R300-million on diesel, security, and maintenance costs. In response to the growing load-shedding problem in South Africa, Vodacom Group increased its investment in power resilience to ensure network availability. This led to an accelerated demand for data, which grew by 45.4% year on year in the fourth quarter.
Joosub said that sustained load shedding has been devastating for the South African economy and the telecommunications industry:
“The power situation is critical. It’s been disastrous for us. Networks run on power and many of our customers don’t realise this – they just experience dropped calls and frustration, and that’s why we’ve invested R4-billion to cope with the crisis. As a result, we’ve been able to maintain 94% [network availability] even at stage-6 load shedding.
Eskom deal
He said a deal between Vodacom and Eskom is one of the company’s responses to the power shortage.
“We remain confident that the ‘virtual wheeling’ pilot project we’re pioneering with Eskom will be signed off in the near term and will significantly positively impact the country’s power grid. Ultimately this will affect the over 20 000 towers across the industry that require a reliable power supply to operate optimally,” he said.
Vodacom Group has committed to investing 13-14.5% of its revenue in its networks. Over the next five years, the company plans to invest R60-billion in its South African network, following an investment of approximately R50-billion over the past five years.
In remote areas of South Africa where load shedding has a disastrous impact on all aspects of life, Vodacom’s acquisition of a joint venture stake in South African fibre company Maziv (the parent company of Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa) is expected to help bridge the digital divide.
Through an ambitious fibre roll-out program, the company hopes to provide affordable access to connectivity in some of the country’s most vulnerable regions. The joint venture, which received approval from Icasa in October last year, will house the material fibre network assets of Vodacom South Africa and CIVH. However, the transaction is still subject to ongoing approval from the Competition Commission. Vodacom Group’s full-year revenue was R119.2-billion, an increase of 16% (4.9% in constant currency), positively impacted by the weak rand and the acquisition of Vodafone Egypt.