Vodacom South Africa service revenue increased by 2.1 percent to ZAR 55.75 billion in the year to end March, from 54.62 billion the year before, despite the implementation of deliberate pricing transformation and a low economic growth environment. Growth in the second half of the year was negatively impacted by the transition between national roaming partners and the change in call termination rates.
Customer revenue rose 1.3 percent to ZAR 47.4 billion, supported by a growth in the customer base of 3.7 percent to 43.2 million, with positive net additions of 1.5 million. Data revenue grew 3.9 percent to ZAR 24.3 billion, contributing 43.5 percent to service revenue. Data traffic went up 35.6 percent. Active smart devices on the network lifted 7.6 percent to 19.9 million, of which 10 million were 4G devices. Average usage on these smart devices improved 23.2 percent to 966 MB.
EBITDA declined 1.3 percent to ZAR27.7 billion, while the EBITDA margin of 38.9 percent contracted by 1.2 percentage point, partially as a result of the roaming agreement with Rain. This affected margins by 0.7 percentage points as the operator continued to scale up on the roaming agreement, and move cost of capacity from depreciation to direct expenses. Capex amounted to ZAR 9.6 billion.