Hi. Good afternoon and good morning to those joining the call in the U.S. Welcome to the Highlights Call of 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. Davids. We hope that you enjoyed our video presentation you've seen before this call. The 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 key opportunities to positively impact society and accelerate our growth. This transformation was achieved despite a 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 advance 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've 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 effective growth with excellent return prospects. These growth opportunities lie in our geographic and product diversification. We've expanded into new markets by acquiring Vodacom 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 promotable financial services business with 88 million customers and 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 a 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 integrates a better future for all. Switching gears to the results for financial year 2025, at the 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 857 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 19.2% 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. In terms of 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 rendered around 4%. Pleasingly, our second half was stronger than the first. This improvement was led by prepaid revenue, which grew 6.5% in the year and 4.5% in the second half. The prepaid improvement was supported by an increased emphasis 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.
Most reported good growth now will be on mobile services. Group 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 strong results in insurance. The EBITDA margin was stable at 37% while operating profit increased 2.1% as we moderated our investment into energy resilience. Looking to FY 2026, we are targeting net single-digit EBITDA growth for South Africa. Adding, our 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. Secretly, we were disappointed that the major 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 open currency and translated to 19.2% growth in rand. Looking into fiscal year 2026, 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 50.6 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% U.S. dollar service revenue growth in the DRC .
Mozambique had a tough year, declining 12.8% due to defracting. International EBITDA was ZAR 9.5 billion and declined by 13.8%. This was a disappointing result given the segment's commercial momentum and once-off cost in the DRC from the first half and the year-on-year pressure in Mozambique. Looking into financial year 2026, 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-quarter 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 the greenfield rollout in Ethiopia. In Kenya, service revenue growth was supported by excellent results for emplacement, mobile data, and fixed. A 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 FY 2026, Safaricom is branding 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 FY 2026.
This will clearly have a positive impact on our earnings outlook in the coming year. That concludes my review. Raisibe and I are now ready to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Shameel. The audience is safely here, and thank you for the questions we have received on the platform. We will kick off with questions from Krishendran from 361. He has 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 we have seen a material increase in the credit loss associated with financial assets. Perhaps that one you can take with 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, when the full year was around -5%. It is a nice 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 through Airtime Advance first.
Voice trend? That is, yeah. Sorry, and then ETL.
Hi, everyone. The question about the trend on ETL, the main driver there is the DRC one-off 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. To the government, they do eventually pay, but they just pay a bit slower, and as a result, we took ETL. As we can right now, we are actually in a recovery mode. While 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 exposure.
Our next question is asked by both Jonathan from Prescient and Myuran from MIBFA. First, just to talk to you and ask you 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 FY 2026? I guess the point that both are making is because we're 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 FY 2026, yeah.
Basically, on postpaid, the price increase went in on basically March, around about 6%, but 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 what, close to four years. I think it's well-received, well-accepted within the market. In terms of prepaid, rate'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 [Absa] was asking around that, Rohit from Citi, and Nadim from SBG. Nadim was 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 kept 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 sums. 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 with government. Once that is implemented, I think it will start to help fix the sum 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.
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 gears to the CBM cost savings, Sitholela of Matrix was 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 questions, 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 we can share more on what I call the non-competitive parts of the network and help use that to drive down costs, flesh, optimize profits.
Okay. On the South Africa cost savings program, in line with our SITO growth, which is a program that we've had for generations. Every time we really identify areas to zoom into. There was a detailed review line by line run by SITO and Trust and the team. We 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 meet the widget that you are asking for, the pricing for different things, and lots of RFPs with different suppliers. I think more notably, we also had the last consult on the field cost 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 is being looked at. We are really pleased with the direction that the team 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 opportunity to support the business for growth.
I'd like to basically where we are is effectively seeing 2.7% growth for the full year and we would have seen a -6.8% in Q4. I think the really worry about is just the lumpiness of some of the rebates and so on that we do. Remember, handsets remain a strategic advantage for us in the SA 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 contracts. Any expectations or color we can share on that into FY 2026? A couple of questions from Cesar 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 FY 2026, and then to what extent that could also track EBITDA or EBITDA could track service revenue growth into FY 2026.
Yeah. Let me start off with that one, which is essentially what we've communicated is that, look, the wholesale contract cost is about 1.9%. We see more stability in that given that we signed a long-term agreement with South Sea. We did an extension with Telkom, but also looking to sign a long-term agreement, but 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 hold well into the numbers. We put SA'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, Presient just came back and said he's comfortable to answer around the group ETL 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 for Raisibe.
I mean, finally, in South Africa, we have a slow-paying government, so one of the contributors will be there. We also started a new product for handset financing called EVScore, and taken a more conservative approach in terms of ETL provisioning. It is still early days, so really this is just a modeling issue, not so much that the book has any problem. EVScore, 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. We have taken a bit more Expected Credit Loss 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.
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 is 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 increase to the high 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. Let's say if disaster, we need help type of part of that. That said, remember, it's got a structural price floor. 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 as they were very proud and saw it as best practice, which 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. That also helps to contribute on the net profit margin. Net profit margin is the highest in the group at about 25%. I'm sorry, JP, if I'm correct. That's fine. 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 FY 2025, and how much can you expect for FY 2026? Thanks. That's from Raisibe Setiusew. 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 FY 2025 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 FY 2026, 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 posed the position for very good growth into FY 2026. Expecting good growth from Safaricom and good growth from Vodacom in 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 market sizes, when you do a price adjustment, there is an immediate effect in terms of decrease in volume. But then over time, that recovers back because people still need to utilize the data. A 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 [audio distortion] specifically Mozambique, just asking if the worst is behind us there.
Yeah. I think what we are doing is still pushing for the price growth. We are going in 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 the corner, so you are lapping that and starting to be a lot more positive.
We want to see a lot more positivity, and we think that a price growth 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 is the discussions we are currently having with the regulator.
There are a few more questions on South Africa, so we are going to go back there. John from Absa, I just wanted to get our take on the massive transaction. If we do not get this ruling in our favor, what are our near-term and longer-term plans in the finance space? He specifically wants to know around M&A, would you consider M&A opportunities or rather perhaps pursue a partnership approach? That is on the massive transaction.
A separate question on the rain roaming deal that we have. Over what sort of timeframe 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 a third one on South Africa, and then we'll pause. On the EVScore, we had a specific question on when the device is locked and the user still connects to Wi-Fi.
I can answer that one. The phone is basically a paperweight when you haven't locked it. 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, we are and hearing will come up in July. What's the alternative? As I've been saying today, you might have heard it 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 we can invest. Would we do another M&A transaction? No.
I think being stuck for three years in the comp comp, 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 comp comp 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 at 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&A? That is question one. Question two 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've had this with our progress in terms of our capital allocation, where we have paid the 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 past half at 87% and 75%, 71% from final dividend, combined with 28. Why we did that was to give investors a little bit of relief from the devaluation impact coming out of Ethiopia. We have now just bring this all to a close in terms of that capital allocation. In fact, this is a year that we have paid off some of the expensive debt and increased the dividends to an extent that we thought appropriate while continuing to support our other internal purposes, i.e., CapEx, working capital, and so on.
With our net debt to EBITDA remaining flat at 0.9x , with headroom for M&A opportunities to 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 ZAR 2.4 billion. Given an opportunity, we will continue that journey of making sure that we optimize on our debt holdings.
From a two-year 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 are coming off from 2027. It is triggered in different portfolios at different times. Of course, we will look 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 are 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 has just been a request to cover again the dynamics we're seeing in terms of market share in South Africa, prepaid in particular. A separate question from David from New Street Research is asking around the strong performance he's noted in fixed services in South Africa. Where are we seeing the growth coming from? Any color around that would be appreciated.
Prepaid market share, we're seeing more or less flattish in terms of overall performance on prepaid market share. Of course, customers would have been impacted by the division, so we would have seen an uptick in customers over last year, and then in the last quarter, clean up on those customers. And fixed? On fixed, yes, we've seen a nice step up. I think we've done very well in performance there. Next to a lot of it is enterprise sales. We're seeing good performance on fiber. They're selling our own fiber. They're selling high-speed fiber on the one side, but on the other side, it's basically enterprise solutions, including SD-WAN type solutions, that we're seeing more traction in two years.
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 brand sharing? If that is possible, what 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 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 clear with us, we will give you more color in due course. It's sort of a point where we just need to check the process and go through that with the Competition Commission. On active sharing, Shameel?
Yeah. 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 rebuild, for example, on rural sites. We'll give access to our competitor, and they will give us access to their part. One side of the country, another part, the other side of the country, and effectively reshape. That would be the again. Effectively, we're looking at all forms of sharing. The active sharing is one. Towers is another. Fiber is another. Basically looking at field force outsourcing is another. We're looking at all forms of where can we optimize our cost and performance as well. Sometimes if it's as simple as a co-build, for example, I'll give 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 can you share costs. 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 are also doing a lot more on our towers. Given the fact that we have the largest amount of towers in SA, 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. The specific question related to the overall strategy is, could this help us reduce backhaul costs?
The way I see satellite is really in three blocks. Firstly, backhaul. I think backhaul is a no-brainer. LEO satellites effectively have lower latency and essentially are coming in much cheaper than the geos were. As your projects expire and so on and so on, there's a clear opportunity to shop around and sell. There will also be multiple different options as the satellite comes, as more and more satellite providers come of age. My view is don't 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 it's a good opportunity to put in perspective where we've got 1,200 towers across the group that's still using satellite. That's 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 Wide Web. You're getting more players that are coming in that context. There we see, of course, it's 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's not a cheap product.
Effectively, what we saw was initially they were playing around with very competitive pricing and so on, but they've since moved away from that and rejigged their products to higher revenue models and so on. It is really where there isn't coverage. The third one is direct-to-mobile. When you get to direct-to-mobile, there's a different type of satellite technology which AST does. That will give a better experience. You'll 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 would be like 80-90 satellites, but one satellite looks the size of a football field. They have very different propagation paths and so on.
There you have to work in both cases, you have to work for the telcos because the telcos will own the spectrum that these players need. There will always be limited capacity on satellite, where actually not more than 4%-5% of the traffic can be communicated 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 it 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.