Welcome to our Annual Results Highlights for the year ended 31st March 2025. As we draw the curtain on our Vision 2025 strategy, I'm immensely proud of the progress we have made over the past five years. We have emerged as a purpose-led, leading African operator with clear opportunities to positively impact society and accelerate our growth. This transformation was achieved despite the challenging macroeconomic environment marked by a global health crisis, currency volatility, geopolitical tensions, inflationary pressures, and protracted energy disruptions in South Africa. Our purpose of connecting people for a better future has remained our true north through Vision 2025. It has gathered a momentum of its own as we've advanced our three pillars: empowering people, protecting the planet, and maintaining trust. Providing connectivity to empower people is at the core of our strategy.
To close the digital divide, we are expanding our coverage from neural sites to fiber and to space. We actively pursue underserviced areas and leverage partnerships to accelerate connectivity. For example, in the DRC, we have announced a partnership with Orange to build, own, and operate 2,000 solar-powered rural base stations. Once connectivity is available, we drive access to smartphones and support data affordability. In financial year 2025, we began to scale our prepay enhanced financing initiative and launched additional lower-cost devices. Leveraging our connectivity reach, our tech-for-good solutions play a vital role in addressing challenges across critical sectors, including agriculture, education, energy, and healthcare. Agricultural productivity is crucial to Africa's economic future. We offer digital agricultural solutions that streamline input distribution, provide access to insurance and funding, unlock market opportunities, and facilitate payments and subsidies. We already serve more than 10 million registered beneficiaries in the agricultural sector.
The group's digital education solutions and partnerships provide more than 2.5 million learners with access to educational resources tailored to specific country needs. We have many initiatives, including the e-learning platforms across our footprint. I'm particularly passionate about our gender-based programs, including EMAMA, Support Against Gender-Based Violence, Code Like a Girl, Josué's Cup, our female leadership program, and inclusive procurement. We also support the digital inclusion of people with disabilities through tailored propositions and support services, as well as assistive technologies, accessible customer services, and digital literacy programs. In FY 2025, we hosted our inaugural accessibility conference, marking a significant step towards promoting digital inclusion for persons with disabilities in Africa. We support youth in Africa in pursuing technology-based career paths. This year, we launched a brand-new ambition called the TechStart program.
TechStart, in collaboration with AWS, Microsoft, and Skillsoft, aims to upskill 1 million African youth by 2027 through a combination of classroom-based training and online learning. Under our planet pillar, we have committed to net zero for Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. All our markets have initiatives addressing renewable energy, energy efficiency, circularity, and reducing supply chain emissions. In addition to this commitment, we partner with governments and other stakeholders to provide solutions to meet Africa's environmental challenges. A recent deal with South Africa's power utility, Eskom, is a prime example. We are implementing a fully auditable real-time system that tracks coal from pit to burn, significantly improving efficiency. In an ever-changing environment, we remain committed to doing what is right. Over the last five years, we have emerged as an ESG leader and expect to be even more progressive over the next five years.
Over the last five years, Vision 2025 has been central to our ambition of being Africa's leading communications company. We expanded into new African markets by acquiring Vodafone Egypt and rolling out a greenfield operation in Ethiopia as part of a Safaricom Lab consortium. We are market leaders across our footprint, except in Ethiopia, where we are the challenger as a new entrant. Our geographic diversification and increased scale were key milestones of Vision 2025. In financial year 2020, South Africa contributed 71% of the group's operating profit. Five years later, its contribution is 55%, with Egypt contributing a significant 28%. The geographic expansion also supported our customer-based growth of 96 million customers in the last five years. We now serve 211 million customers across the footprint that includes the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, and Tanzania, which combined has a population of 574 million people.
With connectivity at our core, we want to connect our customers via air, land, or space. Our infrastructure scale supports this ambition. With 48,000 sites across the continent, we are one of Africa's largest power owners. Beyond infrastructure, I am passionate about connecting our customers to smartphones. At 64% penetration, we are using prepay device financing bundles and low-cost devices to bridge the gap for the remaining 80 million customers who still don't have a smartphone. Prepay enhanced financing allows a customer to repay the phone daily or as they generate income. In addition to the progress made in connectivity and geographical reach, we have also driven product diversification as a part of Vision 2025. At the heart of this evolution is our financial service business, which already has 88 million customers. This slide provides more detail on our product diversification with four critical segments.
In financial year 2020, prepay voice was 31% of our service revenue. Today, prepay voice makes up 18% of service revenue and remained flat in the period despite structural pressures. We expect prepay voice to remain as an important contributor to the group as we will manage its contribution over the medium term. There are pockets of growth across the portfolio, including DRC, Egypt, and Tanzania on voice. To deliver on our growth ambitions, we are well-positioned with our other product segments, which have increased their contribution significantly since financial year 2020. Prepay data makes up 29.1% of service revenue and is now 60% larger than voice. We continue to complement the structural growth in data traffic demand with increased network coverage, increased smartphone penetration, and improved data monetization. This supported excellent growth of 24.2% in the year.
Our contract revenue is largely from South Africa and Egypt and contributes 26.1%. While our customers demand a best-in-class experience, there is a non-negotiable focus area for our contract customers. Our value proposition in contract is further enhanced with loyalty, insurance, and content offerings. Shifting our focus to another fast-growing product segment, our beyond mobile services. This segment includes fixed, digital, and financial services and IoT. In the fiber space, we are working on co-investment models to accelerate rollouts across our markets. In South Africa, we were disappointed that the massive transaction was prohibited by the competition tribunal and have largely appealed with the competition's appeals court. Given that fiber is a critical enabler of inclusive economic growth, we remain steadfast in our belief that this transaction holds significant public interest and pro-competitive benefits.
In financial services, which is the largest component of beyond mobile, we are growing across our markets with products that cut across both consumers and merchants. Vodacom's success in this segment is a function of strategic focus. In the slides to come, I will talk you through our roadmap for financial services, which we believe will see this revenue compound at a healthy rate. Pulling together our connectivity, digital, and financial service offerings, we partner with businesses to accelerate their growth and with governments to drive efficiencies. We are transforming the ways of working through digital technology in high-growth areas like cloud hosting, managed security, managed services, and IoT. Our next strategic phase, Vision 2030, builds on the success of Vision 2025 and unlocks an accelerated growth trajectory. Our purpose will continue to lead our strategic direction and is embedded in how we operate.
Through our operations, we aim to close the digital divide, empower our customers, support communities, digitalize governments, and protect the planet. We believe a responsible approach to increasing connectivity can create a better future for all. The first of our three strategic imperatives is about the customer. With our footprint population projected to reach 650 million by 2030, we have a significant opportunity to expand access, drive innovation, and provide affordable services. As we grow our customer base, we will deliver an exceptional customer experience, focus on simplified propositions, and loyalty. Our second imperative is innovating for growth as we diversify our revenue beyond mobile. Achieving market leadership across all forms of connectivity, including fixed, is a strategic priority. In fixed, we plan to leverage partnerships and colts to scale our ambitions. As we innovate beyond mobile, we are committed to driving inclusion.
Smartphone penetration is a priority for us, unlocking opportunities for digital services and financial inclusion. Our financial services empower millions across Africa to participate in the formal economy by providing accessible, reliable, and innovative digital payment platforms. We expect to meaningfully grow our customer base and deepen our product suite. As we pull together our scale and leadership in connectivity, digital, and financial services, we are being integrated solutions provider of choice for our customers. This will power our growth in beyond mobile services. Finally, we believe that investing in our connectivity scale, differentiated platforms, and a future-ready workforce are strategic enablers of growth. As we expand our talent pipeline, embed GenAI training at scale, and foster an engaged frontline-first culture, we will support exceptional customer experience.
Despite being one of Africa's largest power owners, we recognize the value of infrastructure sharing and strategic partnerships to expand coverage and enhance efficiencies. We also see opportunities to harness synergies and scale from Vodafone and across our group to achieve operating model efficiencies and optimize assets, services, and capabilities. For each of these ambitions, we have set clear, ambitious 2030 targets. The key outcome for you, our shareholders, are listed on the right. We now target upgraded growth of double-digit service revenue and EBITDA over the medium term while retaining our attractive returns profile. This slide sets out our growth roadmap for financial services under Vision 2030. We already make a meaningful contribution to financial inclusion across our footprint. Once financially included, we provide customers with an ecosystem that deepens their access to financial services with products like international remittances, global payments, both payments, savings, wealth, lending, and insurance.
Tanzania is a prime example of how we have deepened inclusion. Today, only 41% of our M-Pesa revenue is from peer-to-peer and cash-out, whereas three years ago, this was 83%. Further evidence of Tanzania's success is in its contribution of M-Pesa to service revenue. This now stands at 39% and is just behind Kenya. Looking ahead, the next step of our roadmap is unlocking economic growth through financial services. We want to partner with like-minded companies to create a savings culture for consumers through wealth products and an environment for SMEs to thrive. This is where our super apps play a crucial role. They create an open platform where we can integrate our own products with thousands of external service providers. As we execute on this roadmap, we expect to meaningfully scale our financial service customer base to 120 million customers. Similarly, we expect to scale financial services revenue.
Across our consolidated markets, we target between 15%-20% compounded annual growth to financial year 2030, supporting the group's earning profile. In this slide, we provide proof points of our financial services ecosystem. We refer to it as dual-sided as it caters for both merchants and consumers. Our M-Pesa merchant base increased 24% to more than 1.2 million. This growth helps expand our addressable commission pool beyond peer-to-peer payments and withdrawals into both online and offline commerce. In South Africa, our merchant acquiring business is also growing steadily with over 11,300 merchants. In the consumer space, our super apps are scaling across the group. M-Pesa app users are at 6.7 million, supporting higher outputs. In Egypt, Vodafone Cash is the go-to mobile wallet in the country, with app users reaching 18 million by year-end. In South Africa, we successfully merged our telecommunications app by Vodacom into VodaPay during the year.
This supported rapid growth in active VodaPay users, which reached almost 2 million. A key use case for the One App strategy is the distribution of airtime. In VodaPay, our direct airtime sales is at 10% of prepaid airtime sales. As users come into the app to top up, we leverage the rest of the marketplace to sell one more service. On the right-hand side of the slide, we call out our key growth drivers for financial services in the next financial year. Across our markets, we will deepen financial inclusion, such as savings and loans. For our international markets, these services have already reached 40% of M-Pesa revenue. In Egypt, growth is underpinned by user adoption. We added 3.2 million customers over the last 12 months to reach 11.4 million customers. Into financial year 2026, we are partnering with Egypt's largest bank to support our scale and growth ambitions.
South Africa's financial service growth was fueled by insurance in financial year 2025, and we expect this to remain a key focus driver into financial year 2026. As we see product success like insurance in a market, we're leveraging it into the rest of the group. This is also true for global payments, e-commerce, lending, wealth, and savings, which we are scaling across our footprint. As a group including Safaricom, we have grown our financial services customers by 11.1% to 88 million. The scope for future growth is material with penetration of our base at just 42%. The scale of our financial services business is reflected in the transaction value and volumes processed through our mobile money platforms. We processed $451 billion of transactions over the last 12 months, which equates to $1.2 billion every day.
Our financial service revenue from our consolidated entities reached ZAR 14 billion in the year, up 7.6% in rands. The underlying growth trend of 17.6%, which adjusts for foreign currency, confirms how quickly we are scaling financial services. With an additional ZAR 23 billion generated by Safaricom, this implies a combined fintech footprint that annualizes close to ZAR 37 billion, or $2 billion. This is really a formidable business. Overall, financial services contributed 11.6% to the group's consolidated service revenue. This was supported by the rapid revenue growth in Egypt. At Safaricom, which is an associate, the contribution increased again and reached 43%. Looking at the contribution to profit before tax, which includes Safaricom, the weighting from financial services is around 20%. The bottom-line contribution of financial services means that Vodacom's investment case offers something quite different to a typical emerging market telco.
Turning to the group's results, we reported a strong finish to the year, highlighting our earnings potential as we move past recent currency devaluations. Our customers provide the foundation of our growth. We grew customers by 8 million in the year to 211 million customers. This commercial momentum was evident in our revenue, which reached ZAR 152 billion, up 10.9% on a normalized basis. The reported growth of 1.1% was impacted by the Egyptian devaluation in March 2024. Group service revenue growth was 11.2% on a normalized basis, exceeding our mid-single-digit target. This result reflected excellent growth from Egypt of 45.2% in local currency, comfortably above inflation levels in the market and good growth in our beyond mobile services across the group. Group EBITDA was ZAR 55.5 billion and declined 1.1% due to the translation effects of the Egyptian pound devaluation.
On a normalized basis, EBITDA growth was 7.8%, in line with our target range. Egypt delivered a particularly impressive local currency result, with EBITDA growth of 70.4%. South Africa's EBITDA grew 2.3%, supported by cost initiatives but impacted by lower wholesale revenues. Our international business recovered in the second half but still had a disappointing result, with EBITDA down 10.9%. Excellent growth in Tanzania of 20.5% was offset by winds of cost in the DRC and revenue pressures from repricing in Mozambique. Net profit for the group increased 3.3% to ZAR 19.9 billion, normalizing for currencies. Growth was 13.6%, providing a good signpost for our potential into financial year 2026. Consistent with the net profit result, our HEPS improved significantly in the second half and ended at 857 cents, up 1.3%.
Our capital expenditure intensity was within our guidance of 13%-14.5% of revenue, having spent ZAR 20.3 billion in the year. Finally, looking at the dividend, the board has declared a final dividend of ZAR 3.35 per share, bringing the total dividend for the year to ZAR 6.20 per share. The full-year dividend was up 5.1%, despite the FX pressures we faced in the year. Vodacom's geographic mix balances growth opportunities and strong cash generation. A look at our customer split shows that we have four similarly sized segments. Of our 211 million customers, 78% are outside South Africa. From a revenue perspective, South Africa remains the largest component. Revenue in South Africa grew 2.8%, impacted by a reset to wholesale revenues. International revenue of ZAR 32.3 billion was up 4.6% on a reported basis, impacted by a strong rand.
The normalized growth was 9.3%, supported by good growth in data and M-Pesa. Egypt delivered revenue of ZAR 30.8 billion, contributing 20% to the group. On a reported basis, growth was down 5.4% due to the pound's devaluation in the prior year. In local currency, revenue growth was up an impressive 49.7%, well ahead of inflation. Safaricom had an excellent year, with revenue up 21.7% in rand and 11.2% in shillings. This was driven by double-digit growth in Kenya and accelerated commercial momentum in Ethiopia. Turning to operating profit. In the first half, we reported a decline of 5.2%, but we are back to growth for the full year. In the second half, the Ethiopian devaluation moderated, and we lapped the Egyptian devaluation. On a normalized basis, operating profit was up 10.9%, a fantastic result. The operating profit result in South Africa was consistent with the revenue and EBITDA result.
In our international business, operating profit declined by 25.2%. This was disappointing but also includes the impact of our 5.7% direct stake in Ethiopia and associated foreign exchange losses. Egypt delivered a stellar result. Operating profit growth was 16.9% in ZAR, with local currency growth of 97.5%. Normalizing for last year's FX loss, operating profit growth was a very impressive 65.4%. Finally, to Safaricom. Their contribution increased 22.9% to ZAR 3.3 billion, recovering strongly in the second half, supported by an excellent result in Kenya. Shifting now to a product lens and looking at the contribution of our beyond mobile services to each of our geographic segments. These high-growth services include financial and digital services, IoT and fixed. In South Africa, 17.8% of service revenue is now attributable to beyond mobile, up from 16.6% in the prior year. This reflects ongoing growth in financial services and excellent growth in fixed.
Egypt's beyond mobile contribution is scaling quickly due to Vodafone Cash, digital, and fixed. At a 17.3% contribution, these services are collectively growing more than 60% year on year. Across our international business, the contribution of beyond mobile was 32.4%, while Safaricom continues to set the benchmark at 48%. Under Vision 2030, we intend to scale each of these beyond mobile revenue streams into successful businesses. We target a service revenue contribution of 30% for our consolidated operations by 2030. Turning now to our four segments. Our South African business demonstrated continued resilience, achieving service revenue growth of 2.3%. This was led by a recovery in the prepaid segment, a strong year for consumer contract, and the increasing contribution of our beyond mobile services. Results were impacted by pressure in the wholesale segment, which diluted service revenue by 1.9 percentage points.
Beyond mobile services was up 10% and contributed ZAR 11.2 billion. Fixed service revenue was up an excellent 17.9%, excluding low-margin wholesale transit revenue. Financial services was up 7.9% to ZAR 3.4 billion, supported by a strong result for insurance. Customers were down 11% to 46 million as we optimized gross ads lower and churned inactive customers. The resultant customer base delivered a healthier fourth-quarter output and a good prepaid result. Data traffic increased 36.4% for the year, reflecting the investment we made into network and into spectrum. Looking at our key revenue drivers, mobile contract customer revenue increased by 3.8% to ZAR 24.4 billion. This was supported by good growth in consumer as we implemented another round of more-for-more pricing. Prepaid revenue growth stepped up to 3.5% for the year, reflecting a stronger second half. The result was supported by increased focus on rate management.
This will remain a key focus into financial year 2026, as will prepaid handset financing. Vodacom business service revenue declined by 2.3% to ZAR 16.9 billion, reflecting pressure on wholesale revenue. Excluding wholesale revenue, Vodacom business service revenue was up 5.6%. Cloud, hosting, and security supported this growth, with revenue for this segment up 35.6%. South Africa delivered EBITDA growth of 2.3% to ZAR 33.6 billion. This was a function of excellent cost control, with cost growth contained well below inflation. With the wholesale headwind behind us in South Africa, we are targeting mid-single-digit EBITDA growth for financial year 2026. This will require an ongoing focus on efficiencies as well. We see structural opportunities for cost savings through more sharing. In South Africa, we recently approached the Competition Commission with MTN to advance our sharing agenda. This will be done under the provisions of government's energy user block exemptions regulations.
Egypt had a stellar performance in financial year 2025. We achieved service revenue of EGP 27.7 billion, contributing 23% to the group. Service revenue for the year was up 45.2% in local currency. This growth was broad, based across all the segments. Data traffic was up 28% despite price increases in the year. Appetite for data was also apparent in our data customer growth of 8.2% to 31.5 million. Smartphones on the network were up 13.1%. Egypt delivered excellent growth in beyond mobile services for the year. Financial services revenue was ZAR 2.2 billion, accounting for 8% of service revenue. In local currency, Vodafone Cash service revenue was up an impressive 80.1%. Egypt also posted strong growth in fixed and IoT. Egypt's EBITDA growth was 70.4% in local currency and contributed ZAR 13.4 billion to group EBITDA, or 24.2%.
The reported EBITDA margin of 43.7% was up 3.5 percentage points, reflecting excellent cost control and the impact of foreign exchange losses in the prior year. Net income growth was 99%, a truly excellent result. Service revenue for our international business increased 2.6% to ZAR 30.6 billion, impacted by a stronger rand. From a market perspective, local currency growth of 20.5% in Tanzania, 10.4% in Lesotho, and 8.2% U.S. dollar growth in the DRC. Mozambique had a challenging year due to repricing and post-election tensions. Encouragingly, Mozambique's commercial momentum improved in March 2025, providing scope for a better financial year 2026. Customers were up nicely at 11% to 60 million. International business data traffic growth of 29.6% with 25.9% smartphone user growth. I was particularly pleased with the pace of smartphone penetration.
Normalized M-Pesa revenue growth was up 11.4% to reach ZAR 8.4 billion, contributing 27.3% of international business service revenue. Growth was supported by an excellent performance in Tanzania and new growth areas such as lending, savings, and merchant services. For example, loans facilitated across our international business increased 29.5% to ZAR 21.9 billion. International business EBITDA was ZAR 9.5 billion and declined by 10.9% on a normalized basis. This was a disappointing result that reflected revenue pressure in Mozambique and the impact of band-aids and ad hoc supply escalations in the DRC. We anticipate a clear improvement in EBITDA growth and margins in financial year 2026. Safaricom delivered an excellent year. Service revenue increased 10.8%, with the Kenyan business delivering double-digit growth. EBITDA increased 5.4% in shillings, with Ethiopia supporting a strong recovery in the second half of the financial year.
At a net income level, Safaricom reported growth of 10.8%, or 14.2%, excluding foreign exchange impacts. This result and the declaration of a stable dividend represents important milestones for Safaricom as it scales the greenfield rollout in Ethiopia. Double-clicking them briefly at Kenya and then Ethiopia. Service revenue in Kenya was underpinned by M-Pesa revenue growth of 15.2%. The M-Pesa result was driven by strong customer growth of 10.5% and excellent platform engagement. Kenyan mobile data revenue was another source of strong growth, up 15.2% and supported by customer and traffic growth with strong adoption of our 4G services. Fixed service revenue grew 12.9%, supported by 16.6% growth in customer fixed revenue. The strong revenue performance sets up strong profitability. Kenya EBITDA grew 10.1% with margins at an industry-leading 54%. Switching to Ethiopia, we reached 8.8 million customers, doubling year on year.
Revenue increased 172% with strong growth in ARPU, adding to the customer traction. Looking into financial year 2026, Safaricom is guiding to another excellent year for Kenya, while also forecasting lower losses for Ethiopia. The table on the right of the slide sets this out. The combination of Kenya's growth and Ethiopia's scaling means that the Safaricom group is expected to grow EBIT by around 50% in financial year 2026. This will clearly have a positive impact on our earnings outlook for the coming year. Vodacom is structurally well-positioned for growth. Over three decades, we have built Vodacom Group into a purpose-led business, with a footprint reaching 36% of Africa's GDP. We are a market leader across our footprint, with a unique opportunity to drive inclusion. Our asset-rich portfolio is another point of differentiation, as we own most of our towers and mobile infrastructure.
The combination of our connectivity and financial services scale means that we can consistently deliver returns above our cost of capital. Looking ahead and leveraging these attributes, we have set clear targets for Vision 2030. Our customer base is at the heart of why we exist and key to our long-term success. To earn customer loyalty and deliver an exceptional experience, we will focus on loyalty and simplified propositions. As we execute on this priority, we will strive to obtain network promoters' core leadership in all our markets and reach a target of 260 million customers by 2030. Vodacom has always been an innovative company; it's part of our DNA. As we innovate beyond mobile, we remain committed to driving inclusion and retaining market leadership. Smartphone penetration is a key enabler of inclusion and a priority for us. We have set ourselves a target of 75% by 2030.
We also want to diversify our revenue mix, reflecting our role as an integrated solutions provider of choice, with the contribution of beyond mobile services approaching 30% of group service revenue in our plan. Market leadership also extends to fintech, where we will increase our financial services customer base to 120 million customers by 2030. Finally, we believe that investing in our connectivity scale, differentiated platforms, and a future-ready workforce are strategic enablers of growth. Our commitment to diversity remains strong, with an ambitious gender target aimed at increasing female representation at management levels to 50% by 2030. We will continue to reduce energy consumption through efficiencies, alternative energy, and innovation. Our target is to achieve net zero operations for Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2035. As we leverage all of these opportunities, we set ourselves a target to generate double-digit EBITDA growth over the medium term.
Above all else, our next strategic phase will focus on simplifying and scaling our existing operations as we relentlessly pursue our purpose to connect people for a better future. We look forward to engaging with you over the coming weeks on our investor roadshows. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention.
It gives me great pleasure to unpack our results for the year-ended 31st of March 2025. The results show significant improvement in our bottom line, the result of the second half of the year compared with the first half, as we had expected. My opening slide sets out our group highlights. We achieved 1.1% revenue growth to reach ZAR 152 billion. This is a pleasing result, given that in this period, the Egyptian pound devalued by more than 60% in March 2024.
Group service revenue and EBITDA, which declined 0.1% and 1.1% respectively, both reflect an improved trend from the first half. Our beyond mobile services continue to grow pleasingly, underpinned by financial services. As we move into the next strategic phase, our Vision 2030, we set our sights on reaching a 30% contribution from beyond mobile. The group EBITDA margin was 36.5%, down 0.8 percentage points year on year, reflecting a disappointing year on our international business. Pleasingly, EBITDA margin in South Africa was stable, while in Egypt, we improved the normalized margin by 0.5 percentage points to 45%, reflecting excellent cost containment. HEPS grew 1.3% to 857 cents per share, representing a significant recovery in the second half of the financial year. South Africa, Egypt, and our associates contributed to the earnings growth, while the international business detracted.
Return on capital employed, or ROI, was 23.5%, up 0.4 percentage points on the prior year. This reflects good capital allocation. Looking ahead, our ROI will be included in management's LTI targets. Our balance sheet remains in a healthy position, with leverage sustained at 0.9 times. Our leverage position was supported by excellent free cash flow generation of ZAR 18.2 billion. From a shareholder perspective, our board declared a final dividend of ZAR 3.35 per share, which equates to a full-year dividend of ZAR 6.20 per share. This represents a growth of 5.1%, representing a payout ratio of 78%. Vodacom is evidently one of the highest dividend payouts on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, reflecting our excellent cash generation and strong balance sheet. The fourth quarter represented our strongest service revenue result for the year, both from a reported and normalized perspective.
This provides us with good momentum into the new financial year, FY26. For the quarter, group service revenue grew by 13.5% on a normalized basis, well above our inflation footprint. The result highlights the growth profile of our diversified portfolio and strong commercial execution. The quarter also marked a return to rand reported growth as we left the March 2024 devaluation in Egypt. South Africa's service revenue grew 3.4% in the fourth quarter, the highest growth for the year. The quarterly result was supported by sustained growth in prepaid revenue and an excellent result in fixed revenue. Service revenue of our international business increased 2.6% to ZAR 30.6 billion for the full year, impacted by a stronger rand. In the fourth quarter, service revenue in international business saw growth acceleration to 9.2% as Mozambique's commercial momentum improved in March.
Egypt delivered service revenue of ZAR 27.7 billion in the year, contributing 23% to the group. Their service revenue in local currency accelerated to 47.7% in the fourth quarter. The final quarter of the year in Egypt was supported by a strong commercial campaign, as well as price adjustments implemented across mobile and fixed services in December. While we are pleased with our exit trend for the year, we must acknowledge that the macro cycle has had a material impact on our earnings. We estimate the impact to be around ZAR 2.41 per share over the last three years. Significantly, and despite the numerous geopolitical headwinds, the second half represented a period of stability for us. In fact, there were no material macro impacts to call out for our EPS. This marks a pleasant change from the prior periods.
Despite this outcome, we remain conscious of the global tariff debate, which does not appear to have a material or direct impact on us. We are also pleased that mitigating strategies, which are reflected through our geographic and product revenue diversification, our localized cost structures, and balance sheet position meant that we were able to weather this macro cycle with limited impact on cash generation or leverage. During the year, we refinanced ZAR 11 billion and repaid ZAR 2.4 billion of our most expensive debt. On the right of the slide, we set out our multi-year free cash flow profile. Financial year 2025 was another excellent year as we generated ZAR 18.2 billion of free cash flow. Our free cash flow generation supported unchanged group leverage of 0.9 times net debt to EBITDA, despite a ZAR 2.9 billion investment into the 5G license payment in Egypt.
We reported headline earnings per share of ZAR 8.57, up 1.3%. As already noted, the full-year result reflected two very different trends in the first and the second half of the year. In the second half, headline earnings per share growth recovered to 23.5%, supported by a strong performance from our operations and a period of macro stability. For the full year, Mozambique, DRC, and FX losses from Ethiopia detracted around ZAR 0.80 per share from the full-year result. Earnings from the rest of our operations positively contributed ZAR 0.92 per share, supported by growth in South Africa, Egypt, and Kenya. From reflecting backwards to forward-looking, from a position of commercial and balance sheet strength, we are well-positioned to accelerate our growth. Diversifying our beyond mobile services is a key priority for the group and improving our customer proposition.
On a consolidated basis, with South Africa, Egypt, and international business in scope, we saw that our beyond mobile services revenue contributed 21.4% of group service revenue, up from 20% in the prior year. Encouragingly, there was progress across all our markets. Looking ahead, our Vision 2030 ambition is to increase this contribution to around 30% in the next five years. The largest weighting within beyond mobile is our financial services portfolio. We see the scope for revenue in this business to compound at 15%-20% over the five years as we deepen financial inclusion across our markets. In addition to financial services, we intend to scale our IoT, fixed, and digital service revenue to complement the growth in our core mobile. In my concluding slide, I set out our medium-term targets.
With the strong foundations from our Vision 2025, and as we execute on Vision 2030, we are well-positioned to accelerate growth and deliver attractive returns with a portfolio of market-leading assets across Africa. As a result, we have upgraded our medium-term targets for group service revenue and EBITDA growth from high single-digit to double-digit growth. Our guidance for group capital intensity of 13%-14.5% remains unchanged. These targets are on average over the next three years, based on prevailing economic conditions. These targets are not without challenges. Notably, the macro outlook remains uncertain, with both global growth concerns and local factors. More positively, as evident in our second half, inflation and FX trends have stabilized, at least in the short term. Safaricom, an associate of the group, provided its own guidance for FY2026. Safaricom is expecting another excellent year for Kenya while forecasting lower losses for Ethiopia.
This should provide Vodacom Group with good upside potential for earnings growth in the coming year. On that note, I will conclude, and thank you for your attention.
Good afternoon and good morning to those joining the call in the U.S. Welcome to the Highlights Call for our year ended 31st March 2025. I'm joined by our Group CFO, Raisibe Morathi, as well as our Head of Investor Relations, J.P. Davis. We trust that you enjoyed our video presentation we screened before the call. This video is available on our website. As we draw the curtain on our Vision 2025 strategy, I'm immensely proud of the progress we have made over the past five years. We have emerged as a purpose-led leading African operator with clear opportunities to positively impact society and accelerate our growth. This transformation was achieved despite the challenging macroeconomic environment.
Our purpose of connecting people for a better future has remained our true north through Vision 2025. It has gathered a momentum of its own as we advanced our three purpose pillars of empowering people, protecting the planet, and maintaining trust. In an ever-changing environment, we remain committed to doing what is right. Over the last five years, we have emerged as an ESG leader and expect to be even more progressive over the next five years. Vision 2025 has also shaped an investment case into one that combines attractive growth with excellent return prospects. These growth opportunities lie in our geographic and product diversification. We expanded into new markets by acquiring Vodafone Egypt and rolling out a greenfield operation in Ethiopia as part of a Safaricom-led consortium. In financial year 2020, South Africa contributed 71% of the group's operating profit.
Five years later, its contribution is 55%, with Egypt contributing a significant 28%. We have also built a formidable financial services business with 88 million customers that generates $2 billion of revenue, including Safaricom. This business is expected to compound revenues at 15%-20% over the next five years. Our return profile is supported by the combination of our market leadership positions in connectivity and financial services with our infrastructure scale. In financial year 2025, we reported return on capital employed of 23.5%, up from 23.1% in the previous year. As we look ahead to our next strategic phase called Vision 2030, we intend to build on the success of the last five years. Our Vision 2030 ambitions support a double-digit EBITDA growth outlook, which represents an upgrade from Vision 2025.
While we are laser-focused on our growth and returns, our purpose will continue to lead our strategic direction. It is embedded in how we operate. Through our operations, we aim to close the digital divide, empower our customers, support communities, digitalize governments, and protect the planet. We believe a responsible approach to increasing connectivity can create a better future for all. Switching gear to the results for financial year 2025. At a group level, revenue of ZAR 152.2 billion was up 1.1%, despite significant foreign exchange headwinds. On a normalized basis, an equivalent to a constant currency measure, group service revenue increased 11.2%. This exceeded our target of high single-digit growth. Group EBITDA decreased 1.1% to ZAR 55.5 billion, with normalized growth offset by the foreign exchange rate headwinds. On a normalized basis, EBITDA growth was 7.8%, in line with our medium-term target.
Our headline earnings per share increased 1.3% to ZAR 8.57 per share. This represented a significant recovery in the second half of the financial year, with earnings growth of 23.5% compared with a decline of 19.4% in the first half. On the back of the full-year earnings, we announced a final year dividend of ZAR 6.20. This represents growth of 5.1%. Looking into financial year 2026, we are hopeful that the strong earnings outlook for Vodacom and our associate Safaricom can translate into attractive earnings and dividend growth. Shifting the discussion now to our performance at a product level. Beyond mobile reached 21.4% of group service revenue. Beyond mobile includes fixed, IoT, digital, and financial services, and we target a 30% contribution by 2030. We remain Africa's leading fintech operator, with $451 billion of transactions processed through our mobile money platforms over the last 12 months, including Safaricom.
Our financial service business was up 7.6% in rand, or 17.6% on a normalized basis, and made up 11.6% of group service revenue. The scaling of this business is important to our earnings and returns outlook, given the lower capital intensity of financial services. To our geographical segments. In South Africa, service revenue grew 2.3% to ZAR 63 billion. The result was negatively impacted by a 1.9 percentage point headwind from wholesale revenue. This puts the underlying growth trend at around 4%. Pleasingly, our second half was stronger than the first. This improvement was led by prepaid revenue, which grew 3.5% in the year and 4.5% in the second half. The prepaid improvement was supported by an increased focus on rate management. Mobile contract customer revenue was also a source of good growth in the year, up 3.8%.
This was supported by the consumer segment and our more-for-more price increases. We also reported good growth in our beyond mobile services. Fixed service revenue was up 17.9%, excluding low-margin wholesale transit revenue. Service revenue generated from financial services was up 7.9% to ZAR 3.4 billion, supported by a strong result for insurance. The EBITDA margin was stable at 37%, while operating profit increased 2.1% as we moderated our investment into energy resilience. Looking to FY2026, we are targeting mid-single-digit EBITDA growth for South Africa. Lapping the wholesale headwind should help, but we will also remain laser-focused on cost efficiencies. Across the group, we see structural opportunities for cost savings through more sharing. We recently approached the Competition Commission in South Africa with MTN to advance our sharing agenda. This will be done under provisions of government's energy user block exemption regulation.
We're also progressing with our virtual wheeling project with Eskom and hope to provide a joint update with the utility in the near term. Separately, we were disappointed that the CIVH transaction was prohibited by the Competition Tribunal, especially given that it had received support from ICASA, our competitors, and the South African government. Vodacom and CIVH have lodged an appeal with the Competition Appeals Court, challenging the Competition Tribunal prohibition. The Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition has also lodged an appeal alongside us. The hearing has been scheduled for the 22nd of July. Egypt's performance was stellar. Service revenue in local currency was up 45.2%, well above inflation. The result was broad-based, with strong growth in consumer, mobile, and fixed business, and Vodafone Cash. In the fourth quarter, growth accelerated to 47.7%, supported by price actions in December.
Vodafone Cash was a standout result, with revenue up 80.1% and its contribution at 8% of service revenue. Egypt delivered ZAR 13.4 billion of EBITDA, equivalent to 24.2% of the group's result. The normalized EBITDA margin was 45%, a healthy outcome reflecting good cost containment in a high inflation environment. The bottom line result for Egypt was even more impressive. Net income growth was 99% in local currency and translated to 19.2% growth in rands. Looking into FY2026, we expect Egypt to deliver comfortably above our medium-term growth target of 20%. Our international business reported good service revenue growth, but had a disappointing EBITDA performance. Service revenue was ZAR 30.6 billion, up 2.6%, or 7.1% on a normalized basis. From a market perspective, we delivered 20.5% local currency growth in Tanzania, 10.4% in Lesotho, and 8.2% US dollar service revenue growth in the DRC.
Mozambique had a tough year, declining 12.8% due to repricing. International EBITDA was ZAR 9.5 billion and declined by 13.8%. This was a disappointing result, given the segment's commercial momentum and rise of cost in the DRC from the first half and the year-on-year pressure in Mozambique. Looking into FY2026, we expect a good recovery from international and a return to double-digit EBITDA growth. This will be driven by good momentum in Tanzania, improving trends in Mozambique, and an easier competitive for the DRC. Our fourth business segment, Safaricom, is an important earnings driver. Safaricom delivered an excellent year overall. Service revenue increased 10.8%, with the Kenyan business delivering double-digit growth. EBITDA increased 5.4% in shillings, with Ethiopia supporting a strong recovery in the second half of the financial year.
At the net income level, Safaricom reported growth of 10.8%, or 14.2%, excluding foreign exchange impacts. The result and the declaration of a stable dividend represent an important milestone for Safaricom, as it scales a greenfield rollout in Ethiopia. In Kenya, service revenue growth was supported by excellent results for M-Pesa, mobile data, and fixed. The strong revenue performance sets up strong profitability matrices. Kenya EBITDA grew by 10.1%, with margins at 54%. Switching to Ethiopia, we reached 8.8 million customers, doubling year-on-year. Service revenue increased 239%, with strong output growth adding to the customer traction. Looking into FY2026, Safaricom is guiding to another excellent year for Kenya, while also forecasting lower losses for Ethiopia. The combination of Kenya's growth and Ethiopia's scaling means that Safaricom Group is expected to grow EBIT by more than 46% in FY2026.
This would clearly have a positive impact on our earnings outlook for the coming year. That concludes my review. Raisibe and I are now ready to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Shameel. For the audience, it's JP here, and thank you for all of the questions we've received on the platform. We'll kick off with questions from Prashendran from 361. He's got a couple on SA and then one overall question on South Africa, asking the extent of prepaid charges now made up from airtime advance, and then just asking about the voice trend that we saw in prepaid for the last quarter of the year. Those are the two SA questions, then a group question around the financial assets, noting that there's been a material increase in the credit loss associated with financial assets. Perhaps that one you can take, Raisibe.
Shameel, start with South Africa.
Sure. I think firstly on the prepaid revenue or the voice revenue trends, we saw basically a -8.5% in Q4, where the full year was around -5%. A slight acceleration, but also in the last quarter, you also had the summer promotions and so on. We are not overly worried about that. In terms of airtime advance, just below 50% of prepaid recharges, if you like, would go to airtime advance first. Voice trend? I did.
Yeah. Sorry, and then ECL. Yeah. Hi everyone. The question about the trend on ECL, the main driver there is the DRC one-offs that we called out in the first half. Fortunately, it really was just in the first half. Here we did a bit of a detailed review of our book.
Having exposure to government, they do eventually pay, but they just pay a bit slower. As a result, we took ECL. As we stand right now, we are actually in a recovery mode. Whilst looking at DRC, we basically just looked at government exposures across the board. Elevation is as a result of taking a more conservative view around the government exposures in particular.
Okay. Our next question is asked by both Jonathan from Prescient and Miron from MPFA, both just talking and asking about price increases. Can we just talk a little bit about the price increases we've put through on prepaid and postpaid, scope for further price increases into FY2026? I guess the point that both are making is those are looking a little bit higher than inflation at the moment.
Can we see price increases of this type of nature going forward, sort of call it mid-single digit when inflation's around 3% or 4%? Prospects for price increases on both prepaid and postpaid into FY2026, yeah.
Yeah, I think on postpaid, the price increase went in basically in March around about 6%. Remember, the strategy is more for more. Effectively, we put the price up, but also give customers value, specifically more data for putting up the price. Essentially, that more for more strategy we've been doing now for close to four years. I think it's well received, well accepted within the market. In terms of prepaid, the need's more opportunistic, and it's all about rate management, to be frank.
What we're trying to do is to make sure that we can try and manage the rate for an outcome more than price increases per se. That is a combination of price increases, removal of certain bundle options, and then, of course, making sure that we have a stronger handle on the outcome of our CBM promotions.
We have a few questions around the prepaid customer trend in the fourth quarter. Mike from Abio was asking around that. There are a hit from Citi and Nadim from SPG. Nadim is also just asking around what we're seeing from a market share perspective in SA prepaid over the last quarter. How do we think we've shaped up with the rest of the industry? The subscribers and then the market share.
Yeah. On the subscribers, it was a cleanup.
The cleanup would have affected the financial service numbers, affected the contract numbers, and so on as well. Essentially, what we have done is basically deleted low-value, no-value SIMs. One of the structural problems in South Africa still is there is some washing machine, which we hope to fix with a new process for customer registration, which is an industry we are dealing with government. Once that is implemented, I think it will start to help fix the SIM wastage, as I call it. When we look at the active 30-day base, it is still growing. That is the base that we really look at internally versus the 90-day base. There we are still seeing good growth, and we are happy with the performance of the base. Also, when you delete the low-value customers, what happens then, or no-value customers, your output actually goes up.
It's just a tighter lens of deleting those customers so also you can get the numbers back quicker.
Okay. Just sticking with South Africa, we will move to the other markets in a moment. On South Africa, Nadim wanted to check in with us on SA handset revenue. He noted that declined modestly in the fourth quarter. Is there any feedback we have there? Perhaps switching gear to the CBN and cost savings, Sipilele of Matrix just asking around, elaborate a little bit more on South Africa's cost-saving initiatives, where these are coming from. I don't know who would prefer to take the question, but just around related to that, the sharing opportunity agenda with MTN South Africa. What's on the table there?
Yeah. On the sharing agenda, basically what we're doing is effectively looking at where can we share more.
We're doing that with operators across the continent. We're doing a similar exercise with Airtel. Of course, you've seen the JV announcement with Orange in the DRC. We're looking at how can we share more or what I call the non-competitive parts of the network and help use that to drive down costs/optimize CapEx.
Okay. On SA's cost-savings program, in line with our SIFO Growth, which is a program that we've had for generations. Every time you really identify areas to zoom into.
There was a detailed review line by line run by Sito and Tref and the team, and really looked at where we can optimize on some of the contracts, looked at where we can manage the demand for different things that we do, the timing of that, and whether you really need the widget that you are asking for, the pricing for different things, lots of RFPs with different suppliers. I think more notably, we also chased a large contract on the field force operations. We have continued to look at optimizing the energy-related activities, more sharing agenda from within the group. Obviously, the sharing with MTN is also one of the initiatives that has been looked at. We are really pleased with the direction that the team in SA has taken.
Of course, the other markets also are doing similar things, but really excited about the outcomes of that and maintained cost growth at below inflation whilst there's still some opportunities to support the business for growth.
On devices, basically where we are is effectively seeing 2.7% growth for the full year. And you would have seen a -6.8% in Q4. Nothing to really worry about. There's just the lumpiness of some of the rebates and so on that we do remember and sets remain a strategic advantage for us in the S.A. market, being the only operator that really has full control over the supply.
A couple more on South Africa. Rohit is asking from Citi is just asking around the telecom wholesale contract. Any expectations or color we can share on that into FY2026?
A couple of questions from Sazar from Bank of America on South Africa. He's wanting to check in whether we could potentially see service revenue accelerate in South Africa into FY2026, and then to what extent that could also track EBITDA, could track service revenue growth into FY2026.
Yeah. Let me start off with that one, which is essentially what we've communicated is that, look, the wholesale contracts cost us about 1.9%. We see more stability in that given that we've signed a long-term agreement with CIVH. We did an extension with Telkom, but also looking to sign a long-term agreement. It will not be at different rates to what we, or much reduced rates than what we have currently. We see a lot more stability in the wholesale segment going forward, and that will bode well into the numbers.
We put S.A.'s growth in EBITDA at between 4% and 5% and the same on service revenue.
Okay. Last one on South Africa for the moment, and then we will switch to Egypt. In South Africa, Prashin has just come back and said comfortable with the answer around the group ECL discussion or expected credit loss discussion, but he just wanted to get an update on South Africa specifically around expected credit losses, if he can provide some commentary on that, Raisibe.
I mean, similarly, in South Africa, we have a slow-paying government. One of the contributors will be that. We also started a new product for handset financing called Easy2Own and taken a more conservative approach in terms of ECL provisioning. It is still early days.
Really, this is just a modeling issue, not so much that the book has any problems. Easy2Own, just a reminder, is where we finance prepaid account holders for owning phones on the basis of the locking mechanism, and the phone unlocks as and when you charge for airtime on a normal basis. Yeah, we have taken a bit more ECL from that perspective, but it is a small book in the bigger scheme. Otherwise, it is just really in the normal cost, nothing that really stands out or is problematic in terms of our book.
Switching gear to Egypt, Maddie from HSBC is asking a couple of questions on Egypt. Firstly, can the growth momentum be sustained without further price hikes? Related to that, what are our expectations for price hikes in Egypt?
He's asking separately around the EBITDA margin in Egypt, why are we not seeing as much margin expansion, perhaps as he was looking for, despite the strong revenue growth? Expectations on service revenue and expectations on margin. If I may, just I think would help complete that sort of line of questioning. There is a separate question coming through just on the net income margin for Egypt. What are we seeing on the net income margin? Maybe that can help complete the story.
Yeah. Maybe just on the, so firstly, on the price hikes, essentially, we've had a price hike of 30% in December. Of course, that will carry on for the better part of this new fiscal until December next year. You've got that price increase through. I think from a, remember, the justification of pushing the price increases hard was also devaluation.
That pressure is off with the stability in the currency now. Let's say it's not an automatic every-year price increase market. It's a, "If there's a disaster, we need help," type of part of that. That said, remember, it's got a structural price floor, and that structural price floor helps for everything to convert into strong revenue growth. We have that in Tanzania, and we have that in Egypt, and that's why you're seeing the stronger growth coming through. That's basically based on the health of the industry. We recently hosted some investors in Egypt, and the government confirmed that they saw this as something that would stay, but also something that created a win-win situation and that they were very proud and saw it as best practice that should be implemented by many more markets.
In terms of margin, we're very happy with a 45% margin in Egypt, and that's coming from, I mean, the continuous growth in data, but also just remember we have a mixed part as well. The margin on fiber is a bit lower because it's an ISP model, but it contributes higher on the net profit level. So that also helps to contribute on the net profit margin. The net profit margin is the highest in the group at about 25%. Jacob, can we connect? That's spot on. So 25% net profit margin, which is very, very strong in terms of the net income margin for this business.
A few more on Egypt. There's a question from Nadim around expectations for elasticity. I guess we've obviously put up the price. What are our thoughts around elasticity?
Perhaps one I can just quickly take because it's largely related to Egypt, which was, "Please, can you share the minority dividend in FY2025, and how much can you expect for FY2026?" Thanks. That's from Rohit of Citi. I'll just quickly do the minority dividend. We disclosed that together with the receipt of Safaricom's dividend, so net number, the net number in FY2025 was positive ZAR 900 million or rounded up to ZAR 900 million. The minority element of that, so the negative, was about ZAR 1.8 billion, largely from Egypt. Expectations for FY2026, I suppose, would be guiding on both the net income of Safaricom and Vodafone Egypt, which we're not going to do, but I think qualitatively to say that both are positioned for very good growth into FY2026. Expecting good growth from Safaricom and good growth from Vodafone Egypt. Shameel, back to you on the elasticity question.
Yeah. I think on the elasticity part, what you will see, which you've seen in all markets, right, is when you do a price adjustment, there is an immediate effect in terms of decrease in volume. Then over time, that recovers back because people still need to utilize the data. General rule of thumb, about four months before it fully recovers. Of course, more than offset in this case with the price increase.
Yeah. Maddie from HSBC has a question on international and specifically Mozambique, just asking if the worst is behind us there.
Yeah. I think what we are doing is still pushing for a price floor there. We do not have one now to be upfront. What we are seeing is we are now lapping the price changes that we made. We are fully competitive now in that market. Yes, it has now turned a corner.
You're lapping that and starting to be a lot more positive. We want to see a lot more positivity, and we think that a price floor is the right way to ensure healthy investment, healthy returns, good sector, and so on, because you did have price dumping in that market. That's the discussions we're currently having with the regulator.
There are a few more questions on South Africa. We're going to go back there. John O from Absa just wanted to get our take on the massive transaction. If we don't get this ruling in our favor, what are our near-term and longer-term plans in the fiber space? He specifically wants to know around M&A. Would you consider M&A opportunities or rather perhaps pursue a partnership approach? That's on the massive transaction. A separate question on the rain roaming deal that we have.
Over what sort of time frame does that come up for renewal, and to what extent do you still need additional capacity given our spectrum position post the auction? If we can just squeeze in the third one on South Africa, and then we'll pause. On the Easy2Own, he had a specific question on when the device is locked, can a user still connect to Wi-Fi? No, I can answer that one. The phone is basically a paperweight when you haven't unlocked. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a good incentive to recharge. Perhaps, Shameel, you can take the other two.
Yeah. On the massive transaction, effectively, I mean, look, the gearings will come up in July. What's the alternative? As I've been saying today, you might have heard in the media, the money's in the bank.
Effectively, we have all the optionality in our stable in terms of what we can do and where can we invest. Would we do another M&A transaction? No. I think being stuck for three years in the Comcom, thank you very much, but no thank you. We have a lot of opportunities across our markets for fiber, so we'll look at where best to put the money. That does not rule out that we'll do something in South Africa, but we're not going to go and sit in front of the Comcom for three years. If you do not want our money, we'll go invest it somewhere else.
Perhaps two questions for Raisibe.
The first one from Maddie of HSBC, just noting the strong free cash flow generation, asking if we've got scope to see higher dividend per share payouts going forward, or do you still want to keep some cash for M&As? That's question one. The second question from Market Anchor Capital, asking for an update around the please call me matters and thoughts on any potential timing there.
In terms of the free cash flow, yes, we're quite pleased with our progress in terms of our capital allocation, where we have increased paid dividend at higher than 75%, noting that our policy is at least 75%. We paid at 78%, comprised of an even higher payout in the first half at 87% and 71% for the final dividend.
Combined the 78, why we did that was to give investors a little bit of relief from the devaluation impact coming out of Ethiopia. Now, just bring this all to a close in terms of that capital allocation, this is the year that we have paid off some of the expensive debt and increased the dividend to an extent that we thought appropriate and was continued to support our other internal purposes, i.e., CapEx, working capital, and so on. With our net debt to EBITDA remaining flat at 0.9 times with the headroom for M&A should opportunities arise. Obviously, more on the radar being the massive transaction should the approval come through. That gives you an indication of the flexibility that will apply as and when opportunities arise. We do recognize that the delevering, there's still a road to go.
We paid off $2.4 billion, and given an opportunity, we will continue that journey of making sure that we optimize on our debt holdings. From a PCM perspective, no further developments since the last event being when the case was ventilated in the Constitutional Court, which was on the 21st of November 2024. We just wait at this point in time, waiting to hear the outcome from that process.
Maybe just on the—sorry, we did not answer the rain question. Effectively, the rain contracts start coming off from 2027. It is staggered, different portfolios at different times. Of course, we will relook to renegotiate the terms given that we are not under pressure anymore for spectrum. I think that would be our stance on that. To answer your question, when we do fiber, it will probably be in the form of JVs going forward.
Just to be clear, we're not going on a buying or going into new markets approach. We'd rather double down on the markets that we're in. We're trying to do as much as we can through partnerships, the logic being that at least we'll have a play in that fiber part because we don't have the money to do everything. Bringing on a partner, a like-minded partner, will allow us, one, we share the economics, but two, to have a meaningful play in that context. There's just been a request to cover again the dynamics we're seeing in terms of market share in South Africa, prepaid in particular. Then a separate question from David from New Street Research asking around the strong performance he's noted in fixed services in South Africa. Where are we seeing this growth coming from?
Any color around that would be appreciated.
Yeah. Prepaid market share, we see more or less flattish in terms of overall performance on prepaid market share. Of course, customers would have been impacted by the deletion, so we would have seen an uptick in customers over last year and then in the last quarter clean up on those customers. Fixed? On fixed, yes, we've seen a nice step up. I think we've done very well in performance there. A lot of it is enterprise sales. We've seen good performance on fiber. That's selling our own fiber. That's selling ISP fiber on the one side. On the other side, it's basically enterprise solutions, including SD-WAN type solutions that we're seeing more traction in corporate.
We are getting a couple of follow-ups on our sharing agenda across the group.
Justin from NexGen just asking around the sharing agenda across our markets. Are we considering active RAN sharing? If that is possible, which sort of markets could we get to do that in? Maddie's asking around a little bit more color on that MTN network sharing deal with MTN or that cost sharing deal with MTN. How many towers are we talking about? Does this involve the entire country or rural areas? I think, Maddie, on that one, we'll probably have to come back to you because we're in the process of going through this with the Competition Commission at the moment. If you can just bear with us, we will give you more color in due course. It is still at a point where we just need to respect the process and go through that with the Comcom. On active sharing, Shameel?
I mean, the DRC 2,000 towers is active sharing. That will be an active sharing network. In other markets, we're looking at the opportunity where we'll basically, where we build example on rural sites, we'll give access to our competitor, and they will give us access to their part. One builds one side of the country, another part builds the other side of the country, and effectively, we share. That would be the intent. Effectively, we're looking at all forms of sharing. Active sharing is one. Towers is another. Fiber is another. Then basically, looking at field force outsourcing is another. We're looking at all forms of where can we optimize our costs and performance as well.
Sometimes it's as simple as a co-build, for example, let me give you an example of South Africa where we did a national co-build. We built with MTN and Liquid many years ago. We did a co-build from Johannesburg to Cape Town as an example. Yeah. Then we did another one from Cape Town to Durban. These are the type of things that you look at and you see how you can share cost. That is one of the reasons why we were interested in the massive deal because we see DFA as a sharing opportunity of being able to do that. We're also doing a lot more on our towers.
Given the fact that we have the largest amount of towers in S.A., we have improved our customer service levels, all of that, to make sure that we can attract more of the telcos businesses onto sharing towers with us, but also optimizing our costs.
For the moment, the final question from Jonathan. He's asking around our strategy, the group strategy regarding satellites across Africa, including the likes of Starlink and AST. This specific question related to the overall strategy is, could this help us reduce backhaul costs?
Yeah. The way I see satellite is really in three blocks. Firstly, backhaul. I think backhaul is a no-brainer. The LEO satellites effectively have lower latency and essentially are coming in much cheaper than the GEOs were. As your contracts expire and so on and so on, there's a clear opportunity to shop around and sell it.
There will also be multiple different options as the satellite comes, as more and more satellite providers come of age. My view is do not tie yourself in too long to anyone. Let the prices settle and then sign a longer-term agreement or an agreement with the different providers. I think clear opportunity to put into perspective, we have about 1,200 towers across the group that are still using satellite. That is the one. The second part is direct-to-dish, which is where Starlink is playing today and where CAPER will be playing as well and also OneWeb. You are getting more players that are coming in that context. There we see, of course, it is important that the markets are licensed for satellite and not just for one player.
The model seems to be both in the case of Starlink, direct-to-consumer model, but also basically a model where effectively you have the chance to resell the product as well. That is not a cheap product. Effectively, what we saw was initially they were playing around with very competitive pricing and so on, but they have since moved away from that and rejigged their products to higher revenue models and so on. It is really where there is not coverage. The third one is direct-to-mobile. When you get to direct-to-mobile, there is a different type of satellite technology which AST does. That will give a better experience. You will also have the likes of Starlink also doing it. There is a different construct.
Starlink is effectively like 7,600 satellites, I believe is the number that's up at the moment, whereas someone like AST will be like 80-90 satellites, but one satellite's the size of a football field. They have very different propagation paths and so on. In both cases, you have to work through the telcos because the telcos will hold the spectrum that these players need. There will always be limited capacity on satellite. We reckon that not more than 4%-5% of traffic in a country can be carried by satellite. Okay. That is the end of the Q&A from my side. If there are any follow-up questions, you're obviously welcome to reach out to me directly, and we'll get those answered for you. Shameel, handing back to you just to close off. Yep.
Thank you for joining us on today's call. If there's any other questions that you might have, please reach out to the Vodacom Investor Relations team. We'll see you on the road shows. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.