Vodacom Group reported a robust set of interim results for the six months ending September 2025, significantly exceeding its medium-term financial targets. The company’s performance was driven by a rebound in international operations and continued success in its strategy to diversify beyond core mobile services.
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Vodacom achieved double-digit growth across its key financial metrics, enabling a strong dividend payout:
- Service Revenue: Climbed 13.6% on a normalised basis to R65.8 billion, surpassing the group’s medium-term growth target.
- Earnings per Share (HEPS): Headline earnings per share surged by 32.3% to R4.67.
- Interim Dividend: The board declared an interim dividend of R3.30 per share, in line with its policy of distributing at least 75% of HEPS.
- Capital Investment: Vodacom maintained a high level of investment, spending R9.4 billion in the half, supporting a planned full-year capital expenditure (capex) of R23 billion.
Group CEO Shameel Joosub noted that these investments are key to offering a superior digital experience while expanding rural and fibre connectivity.
The strong results were underpinned by Vodacom’s diversification strategy, which is rapidly moving the company toward its Vision 2030 goal of having non-mobile services contribute over 30% of group service revenue.
- Non-Mobile Contribution: Financial services, digital services, fixed connectivity, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions now collectively contribute 21.8% of the group’s total service revenue.
- Customer Base: The group’s total customer base expanded to 223.2 million across its markets.
- M-Pesa Scale: The financial services base grew to 93.7 million customers, with its M-Pesa platform processing a massive R8.2 trillion (US$476.8 billion) in transactions over the past year.
Regional markets delivered significant growth, with Egypt being a major contributor to the group’s overall success:
- Egypt: Delivered standout local-currency service revenue growth of 42.3%, contributing 26.8% of total group revenue.
- South Africa: Service revenue grew by 2.2% to R31.7 billion, driven primarily by strong contract customer additions and impressive 31% growth in data traffic.
- Safaricom: Continued its service revenue growth of 11.1% and successfully scaled its operations in Ethiopia.
In South Africa, Vodacom confirmed that the long-running “please call me” legal dispute involving former employee Nkosana Makate has been settled out of court, bringing an end to years of litigation.
