Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Telkom Limited Q1 FY 2025 trading updates for the quarter ended 30 th June 2024. All participants will be in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. If you should need assistance during the call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. Please note that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Group CEO, Serame Taukobong. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you kindly. Good afternoon. Welcome to our Q1 update. In the room, I'm joined with Nonkul, Group CFO, the IR team, as well as Beauty, our Chief of Strategy. In the morning, we published our Q1 trading update, which I'm sure you've all read, and I'll provide the key highlights of the trading update, beginning with the business performance. Nonkul will then give an update on revenue and EBITDA performance and Group and BU level for the first quarter. I'll return to give an update on the Swiftnet disposal, touch on the regulatory environment, as well as phase II of the BCX staff restructuring. We'll then take any Q&As that you have for us.
We've had a good start to the financial year, achieving positive quarterly results in weak economic conditions and challenging trading environment, with pleasing performance in the top line, benefiting from our data-led strategy and compelling value propositions. Our NGN revenue streams continue their positive momentum and grew by ZAR 576 million, an increase of 7%, and they comprise 80.7% of group revenue in the quarter. We saw good growth in group EBITDA and an improvement in the group EBITDA margin. Demand for data traffic continued, with fixed and mobile data traffic growing substantially during the quarter. We welcome the recommendation of the Swiftnet disposal by the Competition Commission to the Competition Tribunal for approval, which takes the transaction a step towards its finalization. Let me now go through the performance of our business units, starting with Telkom Consumer. Telkom Consumer expanded the revenue. Sorry.
Telkom Consumer expanded revenue low single-digit, on the back of a data-centric approach stemming from both the mobile business and the expansion of fiber offerings. The fiber subscriber base within the consumer grew by 8%, with fiber ARPU increasing by 12.5% and revenue growing 25.1%. Legacy revenue in consumer continues to decline in line with the strategy of transitioning customers to next-generation technologies and now makes up 3.1% of total revenue. Mobile sustained its mid-single-digit revenue growth, driven by the continuous delivery of innovative and value-driven offerings. Propelling this growth was an impressive mobile service revenue growth of 9.5%. Increasingly, customers sought value from our CVM platform, Mo'Nice, which now accounts for 35.4% of total service revenue.
The driving force behind the mobile performance stems from the strengthening of our subscriber base, which rose by 14.6% to 21.2 million total subscribers, while blended ARPU largely held at ZAR 81. Our prepaid segment experienced an increase of 17.4% to 18.2 million subscribers year-on-year, while maintaining ARPU at ZAR 62 at the end of June. In the first six months of the calendar year, we added 1.4 million prepaid subscribers, with just over 50% of the additions coming from Q1 F2025. The postpaid subscriber base remained steady at approximately 3 million subscribers, with ARPU remaining unchanged at ZAR 183 compared to the same period in the same previous year. Mobile data traffic increased by 25.8% to 414 PB. The data growth was bolstered by a 15.1% increase in mobile broadband subscribers to 13.5 million, comprising 63.5% of total subscribers.
As a result, our mobile data revenue had a positive growth of 12.9%. We continue to experience robust growth of our beyond connectivity services, with revenue holding at ZAR 407.5 million. A significant contributor to this growth is the Airtime Advance product, which increased 32.3% year-on-year and now represents 32.9% of our total recharges. Looking now at Openserve, next-generation products and services maintain their upward trajectory, showing continued growth, with fixed data NGN revenue increasing by 7.1%. As Openserve strives to differentiate its product portfolio and strengthen its external wholesale channels, its contribution to Telkom's overall revenue grew by 9.2%. The external wholesale channels experience NGN revenue growth of 9%, and they're now representing 94% of overall external wholesale revenue. Openserve overall revenue continued to decline low single digits, primarily driven by a decline in voice and legacy revenue.
Homes passed by Openserve increased by 13.4% to 1.3 million, and its connect-led strategy continued to deliver positive results, with an increase of 19.5% in the number of homes connected to 615,000, resulting in a connectivity rate of 49%, which continues to be market-leading. With the increase in demand for connectivity and high-speed broadband, Openserve continued to see growth in data consumption as it advanced by 33% to 681 petabytes for the quarter. Openserve's Interaction Net Promoter Score (iNPS) was 72.3%, a 3.3% increase year-on-year, while its network reliability remained at the forefront of the industry, with an exceptional performance of 99.9% across access, transport, and core network.
The continued execution on improved green energy mix through the deployment of lithium batteries and solar energy solutions, together with an improved diesel delivery model, coupled with upgrades of technologies and infrastructure at key central offices, along with the improved stability of the electricity grid, resulted in the diesel spend decreasing by 84.6%. On to BCX. BCX revenue increased low single digit on the back of strong performance in the IT hardware and software business. The IT reported revenue grew mid-single digit, primarily driven by the continued performance of the software and hardware businesses. While the low-margin hardware and software businesses sustained revenue, it's time to strategically allow BCX to gain access to a wider client base and facilitate expansion into high-margin IT services in order to improve the product mix.
The growth in the IT hardware and software business is primarily due to the growth in the local business unit, with an increase of 29.8%. The Converged Communications business revenue declined, driven by the continued migration from legacy services. Legacy telephone lines continued to decline and resulted in the voice revenue decline of 14.6%. Data connectivity revenue, which contributes 33.9% to the converged communication revenue, increased the NGN and revenue share to comprise 78.2%. On the Swiftnet side, the Tower Build Program remained on track, with additional towers being added and in-building solutions sites being constructed during the quarter. Revenue from growing customers increased in the early teens, underpinned by inflationary escalations, new tenancies, 5G expansion, antenna upgrades, as well as new tower builds.
The planned rollout of Power as a Service is in execution phase and on track, with 141 solutions built and connected to customers during the quarter under review. Power as a Service has started to generate revenue on sites connected to customers, and Swiftnet expects it to continue to contribute significantly to revenue growth in the current financial year. Gyro disposal of non-core properties. Gyro continued to rationalize the property portfolio through accelerated disposal and transfer of properties that are no longer core to the group's operational requirements. This ongoing process will continuously reduce the property footprint, optimize property operating costs, and release cash for Telkom. We began the year with 42 properties with a sale value of ZAR 287 million, undergoing the conveyancing process with a target to transfer them during the new financial year.
19 properties were successfully transferred, and sales proceeds of ZAR 161 million realized in the first quarter. The first auction for additional properties approved during the quarter was completed in June, resulting in sales offers for 9 properties to the value of ZAR 33 million, with signature of sales agreements in progress for these properties ahead of commencement of the conveyancing process. Gyro plans to dispose of more non-core properties, including these previously earmarked for property development during the rest of the year. I'll now hand over to Nonkul to go through the revenue and EBITDA performance for group as well as per business unit. Nonkul.
Thank you, Serame, and good afternoon or greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Now, I'll take you through revenue and EBITDA performance for the quarter, starting with the group view.
Group revenue increased within the guidance by 3.9% to ZAR 10.9 billion, and this was driven by growth in demand for NGN offerings. Group EBITDA grew significantly by 24.1% to ZAR 2.8 billion, and this was due to NGN revenue growth, and this was supported by direct costs resulting from our ongoing cost optimization project. We also benefited from the stabilized electricity supply in South Africa during the quarter. Group EBITDA margin improved 4.2 percentage points year-on-year to 25.5% for the quarter. If I look now at each BU, and I will start with revenue performance, and then I'll move to the EBITDA performance. Telkom Consumer recorded a 2.6% increase in revenue to ZAR 6.6 billion. Mobile revenue increased by 5.3% to ZAR 5.7 billion, and as mentioned by Serame, this growth was propelled by mobile services revenue increase of 9.5% to ZAR 5 billion.
Mobile data revenue saw a solid growth to ZAR 3.8 billion. On Openserve, revenue declined by 2.4% to ZAR 3 billion. This was primarily driven by a decline of ZAR 188 million in voice and legacy revenue, despite the ongoing growth that we've seen in the NGN services. BCX revenue increased by 2.4% to ZAR 3.2 billion. The IT business reported revenue grew by 7.1% to ZAR 1.8 billion, and this was primarily driven by the software and the hardware business, which saw growth of 22.5%. Converged communication revenue declined by 3.2% to ZAR 1.4 billion. Swiftnet revenue increased by 5.2% to ZAR 343 million, with revenue growth that we saw coming from customers that continued to increase by 14.5% to ZAR 285 million. If I move to the EBITDA details, Telkom Consumer EBITDA increased by 28.4% to ZAR 1.2 billion.
This was at the back of a solid revenue growth and the prudent cost containment initiatives that we have been driving, and we saw an EBITDA margin improvement of 3.6 percentage points to 18.2%. Mobile EBITDA advanced, growing by 35.7% to ZAR 1.5 billion, and this was due to strong revenue growth, particularly in the prepaid domain and reduced load-sharing costs, and this resulted in an EBITDA margin of 26.8%. Openserve EBITDA increased by 16.8% to ZAR 1 billion as a result of green energy mix improved diesel delivery model, as Serame indicated earlier as well, and also coupled with upgrades at key central office locations, which also saw an improvement in stability of the electricity grid. This resulted in an increase of 5.5 percentage points in EBITDA margin to 33.5%.
BCX EBITDA, however, decreased by 8% to ZAR 253 million, and this is as it continues to be impacted by revenue growth from low-margin hardware and software business, along with converged communication legacy declines. However, this was offset by an improvement in payment of receivables as collections improved. EBITDA margin contracted marginally by 0.9 percentage points, yielding a margin of 8%. Swiftnet EBITDA increased by 7.7% to ZAR 252 million and a strong EBITDA margin of 73.5%. On other activities that we drove in the first quarter, we successfully issued two bond instruments with three-year and five-year tenors, raising ZAR 345 million and ZAR 415 million in these tenors, respectively, in our recent bond auction. We raised a total of ZAR 750 million, and this was to refinance a maturing debt in the 2025 financial year.
The cost of the issuance that was achieved was really competitive pricing, improving the group debt maturity profile and liquidity position. We consider this an affirmation of the group outlook by local debt capital markets that will continue to be a source for refinancing our maturing bonds. Also, in July, Moody's affirmed our corporate family rating at Ba2 and national scale rating at Aa2, with a stable outlook, and these ratings are supported, among others, by the expectation that Telkom's credit metrics will strengthen over the coming 12-18 months. I will hand back to Serame to go through the rest of our presentation for this afternoon. Thank you, Serame.
Thank you, Nonkululeko. So, let me cover the last leg on the update on the Swiftnet disposal.
As I'd indicated, we do welcome the recommendation of the Competition Commission to recommend the transaction for approval to the Tribunal with the following condition. The key condition is to address the public interest concern where the purchaser has a commitment to ensure continued procurement spend towards small and medium enterprises that are owned by historically disadvantaged persons for a period of five years from the merger implementation date. The main outstanding suspensive conditions precedent to close the transactions are the regulatory approvals required from ICASA and the Competition Tribunal, and we are diligently working towards securing these approvals. So, very positive developments in that front. On other regulatory matters, particularly in regards to ICASA, on the 9th of May 2024, ICASA indicated that the licensing of additional high spectrum will be delayed to 2025-2026.
This would allow sufficient time for the authority to consider all relevant issues in designing the process. Just to update the market a bit further, there has been current activity where a mobile network operator has launched a review application regarding spectrum sharing or pooling arrangements with other mobile operators. This may have a bearing on the design of the upcoming spectrum license process. The second point in regards to updates with ICASA is the review of the call termination dates. The review of the call termination rates with ICASA are ongoing, and as Telkom, we have provided written inputs on the proposed rates and costing methodology, which was followed by public hearings in June. Telkom looks forward to the publication of the final regulations and trusts that these will facilitate pro-competition outcomes in the voice market.
As far as the SIU matter, the State Attorney is progressing the appeal, and on the 21st of June, we received an application for condonation for the late filing of the SIU notice of appeal. The Supreme Court of Appeal subsequently issued a directive in terms of which it confirmed the lodgement of the notice of appeal and indicated that the record of High Court proceedings must be filed by the 27th of September. The matter is pending before the Supreme Court of Appeal, and we will continue with the steps to uphold the High Court order, which is in Telkom's favor. The last matter is the BCX phase II staff restructuring. The market conditions remain challenging for BCX, and industry dynamics represent a permanent reset, and this calls for us to relook at BCX structure as a business in order to ensure its sustainability going forward.
We have initiated phase II of BCX's staff restructuring and served the relevant unions with the Section 189 notice and requested CCMA facilitation. This was done on the 1st of August. The group staff restructuring implemented in February 2023 was phase I for BCX to allow them to apply measures to improve their position with the hope of further limiting the impact of employees. Despite these efforts, BCX continues to face persistent operational and financial challenges, which necessitates further business changes and phase II of the staff restructuring. The staff restructuring will only impact BCX and not other businesses. This concludes the call, and I will now hand over to the operator for any questions and answers. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session.
If you would like to ask a question today, please press star then one on your touch-tone phone. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. If you decide to withdraw the question, please press star and then two. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one now. The first question we have comes from Preshendran Odayar from Nedbank CIB. Please go ahead. Preshendran, your line is open sir. Apologies, it seems his line has been cut off. The next question we have comes from Myuran Rajaratnam of Mergence. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, guys, and well done for a good quarter. I suppose I've got two questions and one comment, if I can. Just to confirm, I suppose it's more a clarification, the first one. Your mobile data traffic seems to be accelerating.
If you just look at Q3, Q4 last year, and Q1 this year, the run rate seems to be accelerating. Is that correct? Mobile data traffic.
Do you want to ask all the questions in one go square?
I can do that as well. Okay, I'll ask the second question. I'll keep the comment for the end, if I can. So the second question is, at the full year results, in the presentation, you pointed out that you optimized roaming for the mobile network and that the mobile roaming costs were down 8.5%, if I remember correctly. For that FY2024 versus FY2023, now in Q1 2025 versus the comparable quarter last year, how much did the mobile roaming costs come down by? If you can give us some steer there, that'd be great. So I'll wait for you to answer these two, if I can.
There was a question in the comment.
Do you want the comment as well? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I'm seeing your chairman on Wednesday, right? And we are shareholders. And you mentioned before, Serame, that a range of anything between 8-14 is typical for fiber businesses. But this quarter, you've shown, to some extent, the fiber-to-the-home business has pricing power. The fact that your outputs are going up, right? And we've seen that in the mobile postpaid businesses in South Africa so far for a few years now, but you're showing that it can be done in the fiber-to-the-home business on the retail side. So with the pricing power that's latent in your business, how can I put this gingerly? Hell no. If it's anything less than 10 is how I'm going to say it to your chairman.
I thought I'll say it to you as well because we are keen that we get full value for this Openserve business. It might be a hidden gem. It might not be, but it looks like it might be a hidden gem if there is some pricing power in the business. Just the last comment as well. I think we should focus on South Africa. There's been some talk in the market on the streets that you might be interested in something in SADC regions and things like that. There's enough to occupy Telkom. I'm going to tell the chairman the same thing. There's enough to occupy Telkom in South Africa. Hell no to anything else outside, unless it's on a one-time multiple or something crazy like that. Maybe I'll leave it there. Thank you, Serame. Great quarter today.
Thank you, Myuran.
Let me try and attempt the first questions. You are right. I mean, if you look at the reported numbers, the mobile data has grown and is continuing to grow on a quarter-over-quarter perspective. So that you're absolutely right on. Both what we reported in where we ended at the year of March. So if you look at just year-ending March and where we are right now, so that's the positive trend that we're seeing. I mean, we have reported in the current just year-end year, I think 25% odd growth in mobile data traffic. So that trajectory is we are seeing it holding in a positive growth rate. In terms of roaming traffic, we did report a reduction. You're absolutely right of a 1% decline at the year-end. Hasnain in his cheat sheet did not give me the quarter-over-quarter declines.
I'll have to go back to his numbers on that one. Can I come back to you on the quarter-on-quarter breakdown? And this beauty you've got up there in your cheat sheet, I don't have it, but I can definitely dig that out for you. Yeah. I will dig it out for you because if you look at the contribution that drove the relative cost down, Myuran, in mobile, it would be a significant contributor in the improvement in the mobile numbers with the payment to operators being lower, and the bigger contributor of that payment to operators is mobile. So I can extract the exact number for you out of it.
Thank you very much. The next question we have comes from Jono Bradley of Absa. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks very much for the opportunity to ask questions. Just three from me, please.
Firstly, on Telkom Mobile, just postpaid subscribers have been largely flat over the past year. Are you expecting to aggressively push on the postpaid side again in the near future, or is this sort of the level you're looking to remain at? Most of the growth from here on out will be from sort of price increases in postpaid and then growing the prepaid base. Secondly, just tied to that first question, but on prepaid pricing, are you planning to lift headline pricing in line with your competitors, or is there still more to do on the CVM side before you look at headline pricing? Lastly, just on the outlook for CapEx in the mobile business this year, given the robust data traffic growth, and last year, you sort of spent a bit less than normal.
So just outlook for CapEx on the mobile business, please. Thanks very much.
Yeah. Perfect. Thanks, Jono. On the postpaid, I think what we've indicated with postpaid, as we said to the market, 18 years—I mean, 18 months ago. 18 months ago, we went on that postpaid handset acquisition to recalibrate, I think, and get our postpaid shape, prepaid postpaid shape in line to where we wanted to be. We were historically at about a 90/10 balance. I think we're quite happy with where we are right now in terms of the prepaid/postpaid mix. The focus now, we're driving strongly on SIM-only proposition. We have changed the mix from a high handset type acquisition, focusing more on your mid-range, I think, really driven by the cost and affordability in our market.
So we do still keep our fingers in the handset-driven acquisition, but lowering the mix to more your mid to lower-end side of the market, reflecting what we're seeing in terms of affordability in the market, but still maintaining strong propositions with SIM-only propositions, particularly for renewables. So that's working for the team. They do, however, also drive quite strongly with the RT15, particularly in acquisition in corporate and government, where Telkom traditionally was not as strong. So that will continue to drive that. On prepaid in terms of pricing, yes, we did not trigger pricing activity in line with our competitors, but it is something that I think Lunga and his team will look at in the long term, not right now. I think they will look at their CVM mix and make sure that they remain competitive.
It's not something that we are writing off, Jono, but I think as market conditions prevail, we have lagged the market. We have been on par with the market on postpaid, but it is certainly something that we will not write off. Our CapEx outlook, Jono, remains the same as we've guided when we spoke to the market, I think, a month ago. We are within the guideline. The guidance remains unchanged on mobile CapEx. We feel that in terms of what we have given the team, it's still within the ability to carry that data traffic. So the CapEx guideline, Nonkul, is looking at me quite strongly. It remains unchanged at this point in time, Jono. I think I'll answer your questions.
Thanks very much. Yeah. Yes, thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question we have comes from Nadim Mohamed of SBG Securities. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and well done. An excellent set of results. Just three from my side, all on mobile. Firstly, just on your prepaid subscriber acquisition, there seems to be an acceleration in the last few quarters, and it looks like these are not low-value subs because your output has only gone down to 1% over the last quarter. So I just want to get some color into what's going on in the market. Are you taking share from any specific competitors? And on the trajectory of that, do you think you can continue acquiring customers at this kind of pace?
Secondly, if I look at the data volume growth of 26% relative to the data revenue growth of 13% year-on-year, it looks like you're giving away a lot less volume relative to the revenue growth, and your competitors seem to be giving away a lot more volume to get the revenue. I want to get a sense of how you differ from them. What could you be doing differently in this market to achieve those kind of outcomes? And lastly, just if you could give us some color on the improvement in mobile margins to 26.8%, just want to understand what are the two or three main contributors towards that margin expansion. Thank you.
Excellent. Thank you, Nadim. It's a good thing that I just spent a few good years in the mobile business, so I can try and answer your questions.
So if I take the acquisition, as I indicated, Nadim, when we last spoke, what the mobile team has really been focusing on, without giving away the secret sauce at acquisition, it's been really a strong collaboration with our dealer network to really intrinsically focus on ensuring that they acquire the right shape in terms of a higher-value subscriber and focusing strongly on retention. It's really making sure that that circle between acquisition and retention is driven quite closely, avoiding your washing machine lower-value type subscribers. It's a combination of if you get the subscribers at a higher value, so the higher-value proposition, we see that those subscribers tend to stay longer. Obviously, for the dealers, a longer tenure subscriber gives them a far better ongoing proposition. That mix seems to be working quite well.
The team is also being piloting a combination as well of some low-entry smart—I think they call it a smart feature phone or something along those lines—which also drives that data-type proposition. So it's a mixture of both at the retailers. Where we seem to be growing is from both, as I've indicated, where we are saying that the target is your higher-end of your 2G voice subscribers. So those higher-end 2G subscribers who are looking to now migrate into smartphones is where we are targeting intentionally to get those subscribers who want to move into your 4G and are your data subscribers. That's where we are targeting, which talks to your second point of data value. Because of the ability of the Telkom Mobile intrinsic design, we are able not to necessarily compete on price alone, but also offer more data at the same price point.
So where the competition is being forced to drop at headline pricing, we are trying to make sure that we can at least maintain at an ARPU level, so your average spend per user, but then offer more data at the same price point, which then gives you that sweet spot of at least keeping the average spend but offering more value to the customer at that same price point. So that takes care of your second question. The EBITDA margin, if you look at it, it's a function of a couple of things on a quarter-to-quarter. One, it does talk to Myuran's question of your roaming cost reduction.
So that efficiency of roaming, yes, you've got to say the lower load shedding does obviously have an impact because with lower load shedding means better efficiency for us because the higher the load shedding, the higher the roaming, which therefore the higher the roaming costs. And also, as we indicated in our call, the reduction in overall roaming also has an improvement on your margin improvement over and above the other cost efficiency elements which the guys have been putting in. But roaming does play quite a significant part of that. I hope I've answered you there, Nadim.
Thank you so much. Appreciate that.
Perfect.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one now. The next question we have comes from Pradyumna Mishra of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Congratulations on good set of results.
So I have three small questions. Given the margins are now back to about 25%, should we take this as a base going forward, or there were some one-offs in it? And second one is how strong mobile performance is likely to remain given the weak performance of other operators in South Africa and given the weak macro outlook also? And third one is about any other asset that you plan to monetize in medium term. Thank you.
Could you please repeat your first one for me, please?
Yeah. First one is just extension of what Nadim asked. Given the margins are now back to about 25%, should we take this as a base going forward?
I think I certainly would not model the first quarter for the year. I think we've certainly, on the mobile side, we've been pushing the guys.
Their target was to get 25 by 25, I mean, 25 by the year ending 2025. So I think they've certainly started the year on the right note. It is one quarter. So let's see how they end up here. I think it's also important to be quite prudent and say we are comparing what was a relatively soft quarter last year to a far stronger quarter this year. And yes, one has to factor in the fact that it was a quarter with load shedding, a significant portion of load shedding in the first many days of last year compared to this year. So all conditions being present, one has to be prudent in taking forward. As the base is getting bigger as well, one has to be quite prudent in how we take that forward.
On mobile, we certainly are holding them firm to try and get to that ambition of holding 25 by 25. That is by the year ending 2025. I think on the fixed line elements of fixed line of the business, we are seeing the legacy part of the business coming down. I think that's going to be quite continuing as we see that. It's how we pick up the business going through. Your question in response to what is happening to the rest of the market, I can't comment, of course, on what competition is going to do. We stick to our path. I think it's really one has to look at what are the microeconomic conditions in which we see ongoing in the country right now. Customers are under pressure, I think, as we all know in South Africa.
And it really is how quickly can the end user recover? And I think from that perspective, that is going to put continuous pressure on affordability. And that is something that we need to be cognizant of. And for us, it's really to maintain, to make sure that our value propositions reflect the challenges that our customers have in their pocket. So the key thing for us is what we continue to do and drive and maintain the growth and maintain the performance for the rest of the fiscal. So it is a tough market. And I think these numbers, encouraging as they are, have to be taken in the context of what was a relatively softer first quarter that we are comparing ourselves to.
Thank you, sir. The next question we have comes from Preshendran Odayar of Nedbank CIB. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi everyone. Trying again over here.
Congratulations on the results. Very strong performance from you guys in this first quarter. Seeing that all the easier questions were answered and you got a bit of time, I'm going to try with the slightly trickier ones, if you don't mind, Serame and Nonkululeko. First one, can you give us an update of where gearing is at the end of this quarter? It's not going to be materially different, but I just want to see how some of the EBITDA initiatives that you've had, I mean, the strong EBITDA performance has filtered into your gearing levels at the end of this first quarter. Second question is a bit of a follow-up on Myuran's question. I don't know if you can give us some detail on how much are you actually spending on roaming, and that's across your 2G and your out-of-area roaming.
I mean, I know a few. I don't think it was last year. I think it was a year and a half ago in one of the presentations, you gave a percentage of service revenue. I don't know if you can share that with us. And also, I'm going to try my luck here, the percentage split of roaming between your two roaming partners that you now have. And then the last one, following on your announcement of this phase II of BCX restructuring, would you be able to give us an assessment of what you think the EBITDA impact and potentially a cash impact might be either for this year or will this carry on into next year? That's it. Thank you.
Thank you, Prash. Would expect nothing less from you. Nonkul, do you want to take the first one?
I'll first one and see what the figures on roaming in front of me.
Yes. Thank you, Prash. So yes, the gearing levels, as we indicated when we reported at year-end, we continue to focus to ensure that we stabilize and improve. And therefore, with this performance, you may recall at year-end, we reported a net debt to EBITDA level of about 1.7 times. We've seen marginal improvement just coming from the fact that we've been able to deliver improved performance. But also, if you look at the debt, we spoke earlier about raising ZAR 750 million from the debt market to refinance, but the actual maturity was about ZAR 877 million. So that gives you an indication that we continue to focus on reducing the debt levels, or at least keeping them stable to what we reported last year.
But wherever possible, we continue to look for opportunities to reduce. Therefore, we are directionally still seeing an improvement, but the guidance currently remains at 1.5-1.9 times, as we've indicated, Prash. So I'll stay with that one. And Serame, maybe you can touch on the next one.
So quarter one, FY24, roaming as a percentage of revenue was 8%. Quarter one, FY25, roaming as a percentage of revenue was 5%. 5%, Prash and Myuran.
Thank you, sir. The next question we have comes from Jonathan Kennedy-Good of Prescient Securities. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Just two quick questions from me. First of all, with the change in government and some signs of improving sentiment within corporates, just wondering how your pipeline looks at BCX on hardware sales, software sales, if there is some loosening in the budgets that corporates are deploying in those lines.
And then also on your credit impairment side, in terms of realized credit losses on your accounts receivables, particularly with government, is there any improvement there, or is it just too early to tell? Thank you.
Thanks, Jonathan. I think at this point in time, it's too early to tell. I think if we look at, I think the very biggest thing on BCX at the end of the last financial year, what really drove us was a big focus on collections. I think in the pipeline, certainly it's business as usual. Yes, there are, I think, as people settle, the spending on government, which would have been slightly delayed because of the transition. I think now that everybody has settled and is in their current new roles, we are seeing certainly an acceleration of tenders and tender awards that were being delayed.
So hopefully that will pick up in the next couple of months, particularly for BCX, given that government is the biggest spender in the IC sector. So even tenders that we are waiting for, that we were participating in, that have come through. So we've had some positive awards, which unfortunately I can't mention because we're waiting for SITA's permission to announce, but we've been successful as well. So these were processes that we've been waiting for the past six or eight weeks for those awards to be finally announced, which are good. Telkom has won, but it means there'll be far better uptake as a whole. So we are seeing those engines now beginning to kickstart because DGs, ministers, etc., have been approved. So too early to tell, but at least the machinery seems to be working and getting back into place generally.
Right. Thanks.
Just on the credit impairment side.
Nonkul, do you want to share more color on that? What are you seeing on the side?
So on the impairment, we've not seen necessarily an increase. You'd recall last year we spoke about an improved collection levels from specifically government clients. We're still comfortable that we're not seeing a deterioration from the, or rather requiring an increased provision. There is quite a focused team. And to the point you raise, we've taken a proactive approach to basically get a sense of where are the risks, where there may be changes to ensure that we have a focused approach to make sure we foster relationships where there may be changes. But we're not seeing any risk of increase as such in requiring credit loss provisions from the government perspective.
And maybe, Serame, while I'm on the podium, there's another question we didn't really answer from the Nedbank team around the expected cost of the BCX restructuring. Prash, for now, we may not be able to give you the numbers because the announcement was a few days ago. There's still consultations on the go, and we will basically finalize the calculations once we've done all the details in that regard. But it being phase II of what we started with the rest of Telkom, it would follow the same principles as we did for the other parts of the business. Thanks, Serame.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The last question we have is a follow-up from Myuran Rajaratnam. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. You mentioned, Serame, that your roaming revenue, roaming costs as a percentage of revenue is 5% for this quarter.
Can you give us a sense?
5% of mobiles.
Y es, exactly. Exactly. And can you give us a sense of, firstly, you've been optimizing from what I read for the last year, you've been optimizing the amount of traffic you give to your roaming partners, but you're also busy negotiating a new roaming revenue contract with your mobile partners. So is it more the less traffic that you've optimized that gives you the benefit of less cost, or is it the new contract that you're busy? I presume you signed it, or are you busy still to sign it? Where are we on those things? I have a follow-up.
So the update that we gave is that we have signed a one-year extension with Vodacom because we are in the midst of doing technical testing on proof of concept for new technologies. Oh, you're a very tech-savvy person.
So we're testing out MOCN and MORAN technologies. So whilst we're in the POC phase for that, that's why we extended the current contract. But we have also negotiated new tariffs with both MTN and Vodacom. So it's a balance of both that is allowing us to benefit from the reduction in payments.
Right. And if I can just ask the follow-up, that 5% of revenue, so I'm talking about the 5% of costs, that's roaming costs, as percentage of mobile revenue, part of it's voice roaming and part of it's data roaming, right? Now, which is the bigger component here? Do you spend more on voice roaming, or do you spend more on data roaming? I'm not talking about traffic. I'm talking about rands and cents here.
Beauty would be more technically correct in this because she's more involved in this.
I think, first of all, the volume is small.
Yes. That's why I'm asking about rands and cents, which is bigger. Is it voice rands and cents you pay to Vodacom and MTN, or data rands and cents?
Beauty could probably be quite wrong numbers. Voice, right?
Serame, voice is the higher part of the roaming than data. Data we roam quite a very small percentage based on our database that we currently have of data across the network. We carry a huge bulk of our data. Voice is the area that we roam quite the most on.
And that's in rands and cents, right? Just to confirm.
Right. In rands and cents, but we can't give those numbers, Myuran.
Yes. No, no. I just wanted a sense of it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, guys. This has been a good call.
Remember, Myuran, a big chunk of our voice is actually carried on volume.
Yes.
Because of a higher data proportion of our subscribers.
Yes. No. Well done, guys. Good quarter. Thanks very much. Thank you all.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no further questions on the conference at this time. I will now hand back to Serame for closing comments. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Thank you all for attending our call. And please, if you do have any further questions, do fire away to our team. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to always engaging with you. Thank you. Have a wonderful evening.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that then concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.