Good afternoon, everyone, and good morning to those joining the call in the U.S. We're ready to kick off. I'm joined by our Group CFO, Raisibe Morathi, as well as our Head of Investor Relations, JP Davids. Before we unpack the quarter's performance, I'd like to touch on three important topics: the strategic significance of our recent M&A transactions, how we're thinking about capital allocation as the group evolves, and some of the accounting implications from consolidating Safaricom. Starting off with our strategic acquisitions. In South Africa, we further strengthened our fixed strategy through an additional ZAR 800 million investment in Maziv, supporting the completion of the Herotel transaction. This expands Maziv's fiber homes passed to nearly 3 million, with market share of homes connected reaching over 45%.
We believe that with our investment into Maziv, it is well positioned to accelerate fiber connectivity and help bridge the digital divide in South Africa. This quarter marked a defining moment for Vodacom with the completion of our acquisition of a controlling stake in Safaricom, increasing our shareholding from 35% to 55%, effective 30th of June. This strategically significant milestone enhances the group's scale, diversification, and long-term growth prospects. With Safaricom now consolidated, we enter a new phase of growth with more diversified earning streams and greater exposure to some of Africa's most lucrative opportunities in connectivity, digital services, and financial inclusion. A key driver of the group's growth outlook is financial services. With Safaricom consolidated, the group's annual fintech revenue increases to around $2.5 billion, contributing more than 22% of group service revenue and reinforcing our position as Africa's leading fintech platform.
Reflecting the stronger growth opportunity, we have upgraded our medium-term EBITDA and operating free cash flow targets from double digit to early teens growth. We have also increased our Vision 2030 revenue ambition from ZAR 200 billion to more than ZAR 300 billion, and we raised our target for beyond mobile services as well. With Safaricom in the mix, we expect beyond mobile services to contribute more than 32% of group service revenue. Now turning to capital allocation. Following the Vodafone Egypt acquisition in FY 2023, we adopted a dividend policy of paying out at least 75% of headline earnings. We have consistently met or exceeded this commitment over the past three years, reflecting the resilience of the business and the strength of our cash generation. With the addition of Safaricom, the group has a stronger growth profile and in-market investment opportunities than any other point in its history.
At the same time, the transaction increases leverage towards our 1.5 times net debt to EBITDA threshold, making de-leveraging an important priority. Against this backdrop of higher growth trajectory, the board has approved an updated dividend policy with a payout of at least 65% of headline earnings. The revised policy provides greater flexibility to invest in higher return opportunities, maintain a strong balance sheet, and support sustainable dividend growth. Based on our current outlook, we expect the FY 2027 dividend to increase compared to FY 2026, while retaining the flexibility to distribute above the minimum payout level when appropriate. We believe this balanced approach positions the group to deliver stronger earnings growth, increased cash generation, and sustainable long-term shareholder value. Now shifting from capital allocation to accounting for the M&A transactions. The Safaricom transaction has several important accounting implications for the group.
In line with IFRS 3, we are undertaking a purchase price allocation exercise to determine the fair value of the assets and liabilities acquired. Based on preliminary management estimates, we expect to recognize a fair value uplift of tangible assets and identifiable intangible assets of approximately ZAR 69 billion. These assets will have an associate deferred tax liability. The fair value adjustments are expected to result in a depreciation and an amortization charge of around ZAR 2 billion per annum after tax in minorities. This compares with a charge of approximately ZAR half a billion that was previously recognized for our associate stake in Safaricom. As part of the transaction, Vodacom also acquired rights to a portion of future Safaricom dividends distributions for an upfront consideration of approximately ZAR 5.1 billion.
Turning to the first quarter results at group level. Service revenue grew 6.3% in ZAR and was up 12.6% on a normalized basis, tracking favorably against our medium-term target of double-digit growth. Reported growth was impacted by the translation effects from the stronger ZAR. The result was supported by another excellent period from Egypt, a stable performance in South Africa, and continued strong momentum across our international business. I was particularly pleased with our performance in Beyond Mobile, and specifically Financial Services. Beyond Mobile Services reached 22.8% of group service revenue, up from 21.4% last year. Our Financial Services business, which is the largest component of Beyond Mobile, was up 17.8% in ZAR to ZAR 4.5 billion.
On a normalized basis, Financial Services growth accelerated to an impressive 27%. We remain Africa's leading Financial Services operator, with $548 billion of transactions processed through our mobile money platforms over the last 12 months, including Safaricom. Shifting to South Africa. Service revenue grew 2% to ZAR 16.1 billion. The consumer contract segment grew 3.3%, Vodacom Business service revenue was also up 3.3%, while prepaid returned to growth or up 0.4%. I'm particularly pleased with the recovery in our prepaid business. The result was supported by prepaid data growth of 9.4% to ZAR 3.9 billion. This reflects the positive response to our simplified propositions and enhanced value offerings. As mentioned, our Beyond Mobile numbers were good across the group. In South Africa, Financial Services was up 6.6%, Fixed up 7.5%, and some good project wins in IoT pushed up revenue by 17.5%. Egypt delivered another excellent performance.
Egypt's revenue was ZAR 11.1 billion, up 18.7% in ZAR. The reported growth rate was impacted by a weaker Egyptian pound, which was impacted by the regional conflict. By the end of the quarter, the Egyptian pound had recovered to its February 2026 level. In local currency, revenue was up 36.3%, while service revenue was up 32.8%, contributing 29% to the group. The growth was broad-based and was underpinned by our investment into the network and spectrum. Vodafone Cash delivered an outstanding quarter, with service revenue of ZAR 967 million, up 73% in local currency. The growth rate was supported by promotional activity and may moderate through the year. Financial Services now contributes 10% of Egypt's service revenue, with customers up 30.9% to 15.7 million. Switching to our international business, the positive momentum has continued.
Service revenue was ZAR 8.5 billion, up 4.1% in ZAR, making up 25% of the group. Normalized service revenue was 14%, reflecting strong commercial momentum across the portfolio, with data and M-PESA continuing to drive growth. The growth rates was impacted by the stronger ZAR. Tanzania continued to deliver excellent growth of 21.7% in shillings, while Lesotho was up 16.7%. In DRC, we grew service revenue by 11.3% in $ dollars. Service revenue in Mozambique was up 5.5% in local currency. M-PESA revenue was ZAR 2.6 billion, up 23.5% in local currency. Our fourth business segment is Safaricom. Safaricom was an associate for the quarter but provided an update on Ethiopia's trading results last week. The business is scaling at good pace, reflecting good, strong commercial momentum, adding 4.6 million customers year-on-year to reach 14.7 million customers.
Safaricom Ethiopia remains on track to achieve EBITDA breakeven during FY 2027. That concludes my review. Raisibe and I are now ready to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Shameel. We're going to kick off with some questions on the dividend outlook and related questions on leverage. Just starting with Maddie from HSBC. He notes that Safaricom as an entity both is very profitable and also has low net debt. Could the temporary spike in leverage not have been managed rather by growing EBITDA and the high cash generation across the group rather than changing the DPS ratio? That's question one. Further on the dividend payout, he notes and asks, "We have seen in the recent past that the DPS payout has been at the bottom end of guidance. Is that how we should think about it for the medium term?" In answering that, maybe we'll bundle in Thando's question from UBS at the same time, which is really around leverage.
He's asking: With leverage at around 1.5 times this year, how does it look next year when Safaricom is fully consolidated? How quickly are you planning to deleverage so that the payout ratio could again expand back towards 75%?
Okay. Yeah. I think, look, for us really from a group perspective, I think the higher earnings growth will come through specifically as we start to consolidate Safaricom, and it will contribute positively, and that's why the upgrading of guidance both at EBITDA and at cash, and of course, that will contribute to stronger earnings growth. Our modus operandi is to firstly, with the additional leverage that we're taking on is to then de-lever. Of course, once we've done that, there is then opportunities to either invest into further growth or to basically look at how do we return more value to shareholders. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is, yes, we could have held onto it, but then we'd be sitting with a huge level of debt.
You'll remember a couple of years ago when the interest rates were spiking, it was quite damaging to earnings growth for the group. We are being prudent, and we want to make sure that we can de-lever down to an acceptable level. We will compensate for that with exceptional growth in earnings.
I think maybe just to add, the Safaricom dividend payout at 80%, that is already quite high. We felt because the debt is basically sitting here in group, rather, we need to look at opportunities where we can be able to manage that debt here and obviously pay it off as soon as possible. It is well priced, I must add. However, it is non tax deductible. Only a third of that we are changing to preferences, but the balance of the debt we need to de-lever as quickly as possible. The leverage ratio will peak at 1.5 times, and we expect it to normalize back to the levels of anywhere between one times and 1.2 times. That is only after about three, four years.
For now, we'll just focus on making sure that we service that debt, noting that the interest rate cycle is also turning. We're also quite cautious about the cost of servicing the debt.
Thank you to both of you. One additional call-out from my side is, just to make it clear for everyone, we have pointed towards the FY 2027 dividend growing on the FY 2026 dividend, despite the dividend payout change. Mathematically, that does provide good prospects for headline earnings in the year, although we don't explicitly guide to that. Shameel, maybe coming back to you on the guidance that we've now given. Rohit from Citi is asking, directionally, was the change in guidance solely the impact of consolidating Safaricom? How should we think about Safaricom's growth profile going forward? Are there any other mechanics, for example, the rest of the business organically growing a bit faster that contributed to the guidance upgrade we announced today?
I think what you'll see is that, of course, building on the Vision 2030 strategy and the results that we delivered last year of more than 24% earnings growth, we will continue with that momentum. Egypt, of course, growing strongly at over 32%. That's the first one. International markets growing at 14%, strong growth there. We did indicate that it will be double-digit growth. Egypt will be higher 20s, early 30s, I would say, in terms of growth rates for the year. Of course, South Africa, we will be growing at inflation, we said, is the guidance that we've given. Remember this year, the once-off that we had last year, the Please Call Me. You'll have that in the base, of course, your EBITDA growth, therefore contributing down to earnings growth, will be stronger in South Africa as well this year.
Safaricom has guided towards high teens growth as well. All of that put together gives us this confidence that we can upgrade guidance to early teens.
We have some more specific questions on the PPA charge and the impact of that. Perhaps these are for you, Raisibe. Maddie asking us to confirm, is the approximate incremental increase in the PPA charge around ZAR 1.5 billion after tax and minorities? Perhaps related to that, Sipulele at Matrix asking whether that dividend per share guidance that we shared today is calculated pre or post this new annualized PPA adjustment. That's a couple of questions on PPA. Robert from Deutsche Bank would like a little bit more color on the ZAR 5.1 billion dividend advance that we're making. His question is straightforward in the sense he's asking if that'll reduce dividend leakage going forward, and over what period that dividend leakage out of the group would be reduced if that is the case.
Okay. Thank you. The easy one first. In terms of the dividend, whether it is before or after PPA, it is after PPA. We're guiding on dividend growing after dropping the rate to 65% and after taking care of PPA. Is the incremental PPA charge ZAR 1.5 billion? Yes, that is correct. The ZAR 500 million is what we had when we owned 35% of Safaricom, and now obviously recomputed with the new shareholding. Noting that we're giving you these numbers as the estimates because we are still busy with the PPA exercise. They will be confirmed later, but guidance is broadly within that ballpark.
The ZAR 5.1 billion dividend advance, that is actually net positive for us because we basically advance the money today and then we will get repayment through the dividend that would've been paid to GOK until such time that we have recouped the full amount plus a margin. That is why we're talking about collecting roughly about ZAR 7 billion, ZAR 7.1 billion, over a period of time. It is in a way very small incremental, so I wouldn't really worry too much about that in the context of this dividend story that we pay out as VGL.
I'm going to shift to some questions on South Africa. Beginning with John Davies of Bloomberg Intelligence. He had a few on the regulatory environment in South Africa, asking firstly where we stand on MVNO regulation more broadly. Any updates we can give on the direction of travel with regard to spectrum in the country? He notes there was some noise a little while ago around the wireless open access network resurfacing. Is that actually a real prospect or is that just noise? Then finally, if we could also provide a comment or two on the legal action we're taking with respect to the data bundle expiry rules.
Okay. Firstly on the MVNO regulations, not clear yet in terms of exactly how they're going to regulate it. Of course, we are asking as the telco industry that they ease MVNO regulations and so on. Specifically when it comes to things like the End-User and Subscriber Service Charter to give you an example where the regulations doesn't cater for the MVNOs. It needs to be taken into account in how the regulator sees the industry. At the moment it's more commercial arrangements with each of the telcos, and that's okay. Then it needs to make sure that when you want to do things like End-User and Subscriber Service Charter, then it applies to the networks and its resellers/MVNOs. I think that's an important distinction there. In terms of spectrum, there's nothing new at the moment. Of course, they are sitting on some residual spectrum.
There's talk about them running another auction at a point in time. There's no clarity on dates as yet in terms of when that will happen and what the rules will be of that spectrum auction, should it come to pass. In terms of the wireless open access network, there is some rumblings, but to be honest, it still doesn't make any sense. The question then comes in, the fundamentals of it is: how would you even begin to start that? What would you do with the current infrastructure? Honestly, it's a non-starter, and I don't think it goes anywhere. It was rejected in Parliament a few years ago. If it gets back there, it will be rejected again because it hasn't evolved at all. The arguments are still exactly the same.
In terms of End-User and Subscriber Service Charter, both Vodacom and MTN, after many discussions with ICASA in terms of trying to find a middle ground to make sure that the bigger bundles, the MVNOs, all of these type 2 things were taken into account. Also some clarity on the rules because it's not clear. It hasn't been forthcoming. We were running out of time in terms of the need to implement and in terms of time to challenge. Effectively, that's why we've decided to pursue a legal challenge. At the same time, we will continue to engage with ICASA and try and find a solution.
Shifting to the operational side of South Africa. Starting with perhaps prepaid. Jono from Absa asking for a little bit more color on the acceleration of prepaid data revenue growth that we saw in the first quarter. Nadeem from Standard Bank, perhaps related to that, just asking around the traction of VodaPay. It seems to have been the focus area for recent promotions. Have we seen good traction on that, and how does that impact the prepaid ARPU and our prepaid proposition. Coming back to Maddie from HSBC, he's asking around the contract side. What was the key driver behind the sequential growth slowdown in contract from around 4% in the fourth quarter to around 1.7% this quarter?
A couple of things. Data revenue growth, I think a very strong set of numbers in growth in prepaid, specifically in the South African context. What we saw was very strong growth in the data revenue growth. Your data revenue growth was up. The traffic growth was up a healthy 38.8% across the board in terms of data traffic, so that was very good. The prepaid data revenue growth was up 9.4%, and that's on the back of the changed and simplified prepaid offerings that are gaining quite a bit of traction. Of course, you're starting to lap some of those price changes that we made last year. Also voice becoming a smaller part. Voice was still down double digit, -14%, but is now only 27.5% of prepaid revenue and 11% of service revenue.
The number's becoming smaller, the acceleration of data is basically the execution of our smartphone strategy, growing the number of smartphones, putting the investments in the network where it can monetize quickly with our network monetizing tools using AI. That's also playing out quite well. Changing and simplifying our offers last year due to competitive parts, but that is gaining some good traction. That's worked quite nicely for us. In terms of VodaPay continues to grow strongly, more than 10% of airtime now going through the app. All the other services, because remember, we don't have two apps anymore. We only have one app, which is the VodaPay app. All the telco use cases are in there. We've seen very good growth in things like our spend and get on insurance.
We've seen good growth in longer-term offerings that we're doing through the app. Of course, we're using that as a clear mechanism to communicate with customers. We've seen growth in the number of customers moving from USSD to the app, but also good growth year-over-year, something like up 50% in the GMV that we're utilizing. Of course, the majority of that still remains all the telco use cases, but it's growing much, much faster than when we had two separate apps. Yeah. Sorry. On contract, the slowdown has come more from. If you look at consumer contract, consumer contract was up 3.3%. Strong growth on consumer contract. Then enterprise in total also growing at about the same rate.
The issues really come in more from some of the once-offs that we had last year in enterprise, that has kind of dragged down some of the rates, specifically on some of the university bundles and so on. Yeah.
I'm going to shift to Egypt now. We have a number of questions related to the same sort of themes on Egypt. Jonathan from Prescient perhaps summarizes those with the following two questions. The first one being: can you provide an indication of the impact of the price increase in the year in the quarter in Egypt on data elasticity? Whether we can anticipate a further acceleration in service revenue growth for Egypt in the coming quarters. Part B of that question is a little bit more color around Vodafone Cash in Egypt and what the competitive outlook for that is and perhaps just the state of play when it comes to Vodafone Cash.
As you're going through this answer, Thando has perhaps asked it in a slightly different way, just asking what the big drivers or contributors were between pricing in the quarter, perhaps the World Cup contribution, and the impact of new low-entry plans that was announced by the Egyptian regulator.
So all of that's in the numbers. We still delivered a fantastic growth of 36.3% in revenue and 32.8% in service revenue. Where's the growth come from? Firstly, the customer base continues to grow. So you had a 7.2% increase in customers. So your growth rate are now closing at 53.8 million customers. So that's been very strong. So the first element of growth has come from customer growth. The second element of growth has come at the back of the adding of extra spectrum onto the network. That's helped us to accelerate data traffic growth to 36%. You remember last year it was in the 20s or late 20s, and that's accelerated to 36.1%. So the impact of the price ups has not affected the growth rates as such. That has played a part.
Of course, from a data traffic perspective, you're looking at about, I would say about 3% uplift from the World Cup. Most of the uplift is actually coming from acceleration of the number of smartphones. You'll see that grew 11.8%, but also the monetization of the spectrum that we've put into the network, and just being able to provide more capacity, faster speeds. And remember, in Egypt, the team's very savvy in terms of how we deploy, where we use our smart allocation tools to put it into areas where we get the fastest growth. So looking at where more capacity is required, and looking at multiple busy hours, as we call it, and then putting it in the next best part. So there's almost a grading of where do we put the CapEx first. And that discipline is driving the growth.
We also have rolled it out, and are rolling it out to all our markets as well. From a financial services perspective, 73% growth. Again, very strong growth in terms of the number of customers. So over 30% increase in the number of customers in financial services. 30.9%, it's now 15.7 million customers now using the service. What's increased is the velocity of the number of transactions and, of course, more customers coming on board. Of course, promotions to increase the number of use cases and the frequency of using the service. So increase in the active days, as I would call it, of use. And that's all contributed towards the 73% growth.
On the FIFA. Yes, FIFA had an impact in the quarter, but it's a really very short-term issue. For that reason, the 33% growth in service revenue, we expect to be in the 30s, just ironing out that little magic that happened for a short period of time.
The growth rate for the year will be early 30s on the back of the price increase as well. You'll see ARPU grew 25%. ARPU grew 25% on the back of the price increase, which was 9%-15%, on the back of the data growth, which was 36%.
There are one or two clarification questions on the price up. When was it? It was on the 7th of May. Call that mid-quarter. Preshendran at 361, just wanted to know if there were any one-offs in the quarter for Egypt. If not, why not upgrade the guidance for the year? I think Presh there, what we're saying is there are no one-offs other than the strong performance in data traffic related to the World Cup. Also a bit more promotional activity in Vodafone Cash. I think you picked up from Shameel that there is scope for continued good growth for the rest of the year. I'm going to come back to South Africa. We have a few more operational questions in South Africa.
Sticking with Preshendran, maybe I'll take one or two of these and then hand the rest over to you, Shameel. He's noted the number of smart devices we have on 4G and 5G now at 28.4 million. How many smartphones do you have in total? That number's around 35 million, Presh. We have already dealt with the voice revenue decline in the quarter, being down 14%. If we shift to Thando's question, it's a slightly broader one on the current competitive outlook for consumer spending in South Africa, and looks mostly directed at prepaid. Are we seeing things get better or perhaps stable or even worse? What that means for ARPU. I guess some color on the current competitive environment and consumer spending.
Related to that, Viwe from RMB picking up the superior monetization that you have in a market like Egypt relative to a market like South Africa. South Africa's traffic growth not quite keeping up with the data revenue growth. Is there a roadmap to help close that monetization gap over time?
Firstly, from a competitive dynamics perspective, I think it's more, let's say BAU. There isn't any huge aggressive offerings at the moment. But remember some of the moves were made late last year in terms of the repricing and so on. Now you're starting to see that elasticity coming through, in terms of the offerings. That's helping to contribute to a better performance in prepaid. Then, of course, a big focus for us is making sure that we're driving active usage and so on, or active days growth. We've done a few things that I think is also helping in terms of loyalty, spending campaigns and so on, that I think is also helping us to improve the overall performance of the prepaid base. So that's on the competitive space.
Egypt, Tanzania, Ethiopia have regulated pricing or price floors, as we call it, and that does help to contribute more positively. But with the repricing in South Africa, you should start to see a bit more stability. That's if competition stays where it is in terms of monetization. But to get the full impact, of course, like you would get in Egypt, you do need to have that regulatory intervention.
Jono from Absa, probably a question for you, Raisibe. He asked to provide a little bit of color around the CapEx phasing for this year. Noting that Q1 was below our guidance range of 13.5%-14.5%. Will the CapEx ramp up in Q2 with free cash flow seasonality looking different or similar in FY 2027 to previous years? Referring there to that first half, second half split in terms of where we generate most of the free cash flow.
Yeah. So, the phasing is often dependent on sometimes the exchange rates, sometimes the logistics. It looks like we have seen some noise in logistics as a result of the war. So we expect our CapEx to still be within the guidance that we have provided, noting that it's at 13.5-14.5, more closer to 14. And yeah, so some markets like Tanzania, they had some small delays on the logistics side, but we are on track and you will see quarter two will be quite different. Yeah.
We would expect, again, first half free cash flow to be lower than the second half, just the seasonality of the business. But what we are working towards is to try reduce the extent of that difference between the first half and the second half. There's a question from Matthew from Laurium Capital around Vodafone Egypt and whether we would, or could increase our stake in that business similar to what we've just managed to do with Safaricom. So that's one strategic question for you, Shameel, and then I've got two to follow that. The other one is from Nadeem. He had a question on the broader Vision 2030 outlook, and excluding Safaricom, where do we see the key leverage points for the group for higher revenue? So I guess Vodacom legacy, where are we getting comfort for this higher revenue outlook from?
Then finally, we just have a broader question on Starlink, asking around what would need to happen or change for that to become available in South Africa, noting that we already have the Africa-wide strategic partnership with Starlink.
In Egypt, there is no indication that Telecom Egypt has any intention of reducing its stake. We do have a right of first refusal. So, should they want to sell, I'm sure they'll approach us. But we don't see any indication, and I'm sure they're very happy with the dividends, and the performance of the company as we are. So, being a very good investment for both of us. In terms of the 2030 strategy, remember it was premised on customer growth, so that's the first part. And we are overachieving in that context, 244 million customers. So we are growing our customer base quite nicely on the one side. And then secondly, it was premised on the guidance that we've given, which was the double-digit growth in EBITDA and service revenue and cash. And that's now been upgraded because of Safaricom.
We still see Egypt being growing in the 20s in the foreseeable future. We see the international markets continuing to grow double-digit. We see the South African business being able to grow at inflation plus over the next couple of years. All of that continues to grow strongly. Of course, the diversification into fiber. We see strong growth coming in Maziv. Financial services continues to grow strongly. IoT is growing strongly. The diversification from a product perspective, you'll see Absent Safaricom, 27.5% growth in FinTech in the quarter. The strategy is working, and that's delivering the growth. Of course, if you look into the detailed targets, you'll see it's premised on growing the number of smartphones. It's premised on growing the number of financial services customers and use cases, and so on.
A lot of success in that context, but also growing things like fiber. We'll be putting more fiber through joint ventures in Tanzania. In Kenya, of course, we already have a market-leading position in terms of market leader in fiber. I think very strong in that context as well. On Starlink. Starlink, simply put, doesn't want to comply with the B-BBEE local regulations, and therefore cannot be licensed. I think once they comply with that, then it will be available in South Africa or will become available in South Africa. Alternatively, they need to work through the telcos and use the telco licenses, which you would have noticed, Amazon LEO announcing that they will launch services with Herotel.
Great. We have a couple more. Nadeem has a quite specific question on IFRS 3 business combinations, asking around the useful life of M-PESA under that PPA. Nadeem, I think the guidance at this point is aspects like M-PESA and your intangible assets will be written off over an extended timeframe. That'll be balanced off against write-ups to things like the plant property and equipment, PPE. It's a bit of a melting pot when it comes to the useful life of these various different assets. Unfortunately, we're not quite in a position today to give specifics on that. Hopefully, the broader management estimate we provided today gives you a sense of the direction of travel there. Shameel, back to you. Jono from Absa on the SA or South African prepaid pricing outlook. Can you touch on the competition in data bundle offers now?
Vodacom appears competitively priced relative to peers. Have you seen any responses to your recent price actions or product adjustments?
Yeah. Our price adjustments are not recent, of course. We adjusted five, six months ago. No, we haven't seen any aggressive responses. Remember, it was MTN that moved first, and then, of course, we moved to make sure that we were competitive. Yeah. No big changes in terms of response. Telkom, all their pricing. I think the pricing more or less is stable. I think we're all dealing with the changes that we made last year. It's the way I would put it. Being able to digest that.
Perfect. A follow-up for you, Raisibe, from Myron at MIBA. He wanted to come back to the comments earlier you made around the net debt profile of the group, or at least leverage profile, going from around 1.5 times towards 1.2 times over the next couple of years. He's asking, on that basis, it's not evident that nominal debt will reduce too much. Is that the message we're trying to get across? He would've thought you'd be able to achieve that just by growing EBITDA, rather than paying down debt. Can we maybe provide a little bit of color on what the outlook and the thinking is around nominal debt outlook for the group?
It's a combination of both. Clearly, with the growth outlook that we have, EBITDA will contribute towards that. In terms of the nominal debt, we do pay off expensive debt as and when the opportunities arise. As an example, we did pay off some of the debt that was raised for funding Ethiopia. We refinanced the Egypt debt. We will continue that journey. As best as possible, we want to get to potentially the most optimized levels of cost of debt. For the acquisition-related debt, where we cannot use preference shares, we will seek to repay as soon as possible. As you know, we've been in the market for quite some time with the prefs. We did prefs for the Egypt transaction, for the fiber transaction in S.A.
We are currently finalizing of this current debt, ZAR 9 billion will be done as preference shares. I'm sure there are bankers online here. We are looking for prefs. I'm sure they are ready and available to support us. You can appreciate that the quantum of funding that we are raising, it is probably better to pace ourselves than to go into the market all in one go. Yeah, when the opportunities arise, we will either put prefs or if we're sitting with cash, then we'll obviously pay off the debt.
Following up on that question, Raisibe, Maddie from HSBC asking if there were or is not ways to structure the deal, the Safaricom deal, in perhaps a different way, which might lead to better earnings outcomes for the group. I think you referenced preference shares already, but maybe just some of the considerations we go through as we set up these structures and implement these deals.
We worked through variety of options and I think also very well advised. We took all the inputs and advice that we could take, and we believe that we have taken the most possibly optimal structures that one can take. Fairly fortunate in that we also could raise money between the Vodafone Luxembourg component, where we could also park some of this as a bridge until we are able to engage with the banks. Also note that at the time that we closed this transaction, we were in the final stage of closing out the fiber transaction. Sensibly, we needed to make sure that we approach the banks in a manner that does not create confusion with a lot on the go. Now, outside of the M&A related activity, we are working with banks on variety of other things. Handset finance and so on.
I think it was important for us to really be able to stratify our asks and work through all of that. I do believe that the structures that we got to are probably the best that could be done at that point in time.
Shameel, coming back to you. A question from Viwe at RMB. He picked up on that 40% data traffic growth in South Africa, and around that asking, is that level of traffic growth sustainable at these type of investment levels that we're currently running at? Is there a scenario where if you keep running at these levels, you start to see network deterioration?
No, we're quite comfortable in terms of the capacity that we've created and the investment, the way we're putting it in, and also making sure that we do it in the most optimal way possible. Yeah. Some of it, of course, is driven by Fixed Wireless growth, where we've increased our market share quite considerably, given where we were a few years ago, where we didn't have the spectrum and the ability to deal with it. That's the one part. Also giving more value to customers. We're quite happy that we can, within the CapEx envelope, be able to make sure that we can focus on them. Just remember in the South Africa numbers now, the fiber investments are now massive and not in the South African numbers anymore.
Okay. Great. We are done with the Q and A. Shameel, I will hand back to you just for some final words.
Thank you. The consolidation of Safaricom marks an important milestone in Vodacom's evolution. We now have a stronger, more diversified portfolio with meaningful growth opportunities across South Africa, Safaricom, Egypt, and our international business. With the key portfolio shaping transactions now largely complete, our focus shifts to execution, unlocking the full potential of these assets, and delivering on our Vision 2030 ambitions. Our objective remains clear: to grow earnings, grow cash flow, and grow dividends while building a larger, more diversified, and faster-growing Vodacom. Thank you for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please reach out to the Vodacom Investor Relations team. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you