Telecommunications giant Vodacom on Friday posted a double-digit increase in group revenue and service revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 2023.

Group revenue increased 36.9% to R35.7-billion, boosted by the acquisition of Vodafone Egypt, as well as rand depreciation against the basket of international currencies.

Overall service revenue increased 43.8% to R28.9-billion during the quarter under review. Excluding Vodafone Egypt, group service revenue increased by 9.8%.

“A number of encouraging trends were evident in the Vodacom Group’s first quarter performance, despite the ongoing uncertainty impacting global markets and economies. These include strong service revenue growth in local currency by Vodafone Egypt, Vodacom South Africa’s encouraging data and fixed performance, strong financial services growth and the expansion of M-Pesa’s ecosystem into new service offerings, including merchants,” said Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub.

In South Africa, service revenue grew 3.9% to R15.06-billion, underpinned by the contract segment, fixed and financial services, while overall South African revenue increased 5.6% to R21.4-billion.

“Our R4-billion investment over four years to mitigate the impacts of loadshedding continues to pay dividends. We now invest more than R11-billion a year into our South Africa infrastructure alone, which has resulted in industry-leading network availability during elevated levels of power outages and ultimately contributed to the 3.9% increase in service revenue in our largest market,” he explained.

On a reported basis, International service revenue increased 23.8% to R7.25-billion, driven by data revenue growth and a weaker rand, while Vodafone Egypt grew service revenue 27.6% to R6.84-billion, as financial services revenue more than doubled.

“Supported by our continued focus on financial inclusion and accelerated capital expenditure, revenue in our International operations grew 23.2% to R7.4-billion, underpinned by currency gains and strong growth in M-Pesa and data revenue,” Joosub continued.

Meanwhile, Vodacom is on track to reach its target contribution of revenue from new services, including financial and digital services, fixed and Internet of Things, of 25% to 30% over the medium term.

Currently, these account for almost one-fifth of the group’s total revenue.

Further, financial services revenue surpassed the R3-billion mark in a quarter for the first time after recording an increase of 46.2%, with $1-billion a day transacted on Vodacom’s mobile money platforms.

Joosub pointed out that this was supported by a strong performance in South Africa and M-Pesa, which remains Africa’s largest mobile money platform by transaction value, and its new services in particular such as loans and merchant services.

Combined with financial services in Vodafone Egypt and Safaricom, Vodacom’s mobile money platforms processed $360.6-billion over the last twelve months, up 5.8%.

“In South Africa, growth was underpinned by our insurance business with policies up 10.2%. Our superapp, VodaPay, reached 6.7-million downloads and launched free deposits and added ‘send money’ and cash-out services in the quarter.”

The recently launched Ethiopian business, Safaricom Ethiopia, has made good progress since its commercial launch in October 2022, already reaching 2.7 million customers and is set to launch M-Pesa services in the second quarter of 2023.