Bharti and Vodafone Struggle to Make Money In Africa

For Vodafone Group Plc, Bharti Airtel Ltd. and other phone companies with about $90 billion invested in Africa, making more money from each user in the world’s fastest-growing market is becoming the biggest challenge.

The number of operators is prompting a race to the bottom on call rates. In Tanzania, which has seven phone companies, prices have fallen 90 percent over the past 18 months. Companies also face among the world’s highest “churn” rates, with users frequently changing operators, and patchy infrastructure, all of which make returns on investment difficult.

“It is hard,” said Pieter Uys, chief executive officer of Vodacom Group Ltd., which is controlled by Vodafone and is the largest provider of mobile-phone services in South Africa and Tanzania. “You have to do business in a very different way, you have to build data networks, find other ways to grow revenue.”

Phone operators gathered at Africa’s telecommunications conference that began yesterday in Cape Town want to sell services to the 50 percent of the market that doesn’t have mobile phones. They also want to service current customers more cheaply, without losing user loyalty, while stemming declines in average revenue per user, or ARPU, by offering newer services such as mobile Internet, banking and other money transactions.

“We are now dealing with an ecosystem that’s changing very, very fast,” Andile Ngacaba, chairman of Dimension Data and Convergence Partners, said at the conference. “On the one side, we see this subscriber growth and growth in data and data applications. On the other side, we see this decrease in ARPUs. This requires new models of investment such as infrastructure sharing.”

African Growth

Operators have been lured to the continent by its promise. Africa has a mobile-phone population of about 445 million handsets, according to a McKinsey & Co. report. It took 20 years for the size of the mobile-phone population to reach 200 million, and less than three years to get to the next 200 million, according to the report.

Africa has “become the fastest-growing region in the global cellular market, going from fewer than 2 million mobile phones in 1998 to more than 400 million today,” it said.

The mobile value-added services market in Africa was worth $4.5 billion in 2009, and over the next five years is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent, generating $11.5 billion by 2014, Informa Telecoms & Media, a London-based consultant, said in its Rural Connectivity Report in Africa published this month.

Capture Opportunity

About 80 percent of the sales were from messaging, while mobile Internet contributed 14 percent and mobile entertainment such as music and television 3.5 percent, the report showed.

Internet and broadband penetration is still in single digits, Uys said.

“So the possibilities are still there but it’s what you pay for it to get it, the investment in infrastructure,” he said. “If the tariffs are driven too low for whatever reason then it might also not make sense.”

In order for mobile operators to “capture this opportunity,” the market needs consolidation, McKinsey said. “The industry structure should be rationalized, for example, because many markets, even smaller ones, have four or more players.”

Competition on the continent is fiercer now than it has ever been. In the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, mobile-phone tariffs plunged between 50 percent and 60 percent in the six months through September.

Tumbling Prices

Prices in Kenya have been slashed to such an extent that Safaricom Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore said India’s Bharti, which bought most of Zain’s African operations last year for $9 billion, is losing money on as much as 50 percent of its voice traffic.

Safaricom has an 86 percent share of the market and is 40 percent held by Newbury, England-based Vodafone. Bharti’s head of African operations, Manoj Kohli, declined to comment on Safaricom’s remarks. “We can’t comment on our competitors’ claims,” Kohli said.

On Aug. 18, Bharti halved tariffs in Kenya to 3 shillings, Les Baillie, a spokesman for Safaricom said. Safaricom “knew that voice was always going to become a commodity,” Baillie said. “It was not expected that it would happen so rapidly though.”

Companies are scrambling to adapt their operations to the new climate.

“We have to review our business model and make it leaner and compete on price and have more quality in our network and to have more data,” said Mickael Ghossein, chief executive officer of Orange Telkom Kenya, which is 51 percent held by France Telecom SA. “We have to enhance our quality of networks.”

Sharing Towers

In South Africa, Vodacom, which is 65 percent owned by Vodafone, is investing in data networks. Data now accounts for more than 50 percent of its traffic and is growing at more than 50 percent a year, Uys said.

The company is also pushing smart devices that are able to browse the Internet to low-end segments with touchscreen phones that retail at 499 rand ($73). Once users have an improved mobile-browsing experience, data consumption increases, Uys said

Operators are also sharing infrastructure, especially to reach sparsely populated rural areas where returns on capital invested in infrastructure are low.

Infrastructure sharing and outsourcing of towers has been punted for years. Now, faced with greater competitive pressure, companies are beginning to act.

‘Good Industry’

Last month, Vodafone signed an agreement with Eaton Towers to manage its 750 towers in Ghana. On Nov. 5, American Tower Corp. agreed to buy 3,200 towers from Cell C Ltd., South Africa’s third-largest mobile phone services provider, in a deal worth $430 million.

“We are going to see more and more of those type of deals happening,” said David Lerche, a telecoms analyst at Johannesburg-based Avior Research. “There are lots of little tower companies running around trying to position themselves as tower outsourcers. It’s quite an interesting development.”

For all its challenges, the market is still attractive, Marc Rennard, vice president of Orange Mobile for Africa, Middle East and Asia, said in an interview.

While investor interest has waned a little, “we are profitable, the big players, the five, six main players are profitable,” he said. “It’s still a good industry.”

-Bloomberg

Etisalat Hits 100 Million Mark

UAE-based telecoms operator Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) has revealed that its subscriber base has exceeded 100 million customers across 18 markets in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, covering two billion people. The announcement follows Etisalat’s acquisition of the remaining 18% of its West African venture Atlantique Telecom (AT) it did not already own for USD75 million earlier this month.

Etisalat operates AT as part of a ten-year management contract ending in 2015; the company holds majority stakes in seven operators in Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Niger, Togo, and Central Africa Republic. At the same time, the UAE incumbent revealed it had filed an application with the Indian Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) in December 2009 to obtain approval to raise its 45% stake in its Indian subsidiary Etisalat DB to 50% plus one share. The company has said it is targeting majority stakes in its subsidiaries and associates for greater operational and financial synergy.

Millicom Reports 5% Rise in Q2 Revenues

Millicom International has reported a five percent rise in Q2 revenues to US$814 million compared to a year ago but a drop of 13% in net profits of $114 million, down from the US$132 million a year ago. In Q2 09, Millicom added 1.7 million net new mobile subscribers, reaching 30.8 million total mobile subscribers, an increase of 25% versus Q2 08 as Millicom continues its focus on attracting the more loyal and higher revenue generating customers.

Mikael Grahne, CEO of Millicom, commented: "Our Q2 09 results continue to show the benefits of the actions taken in the last few quarters to focus on both margins and cash flow generation, whilst maintaining or improving our market position. Our EBITDA margin moved up to 45.6%, which is above our long term target margin for the Group, as we tighten cost controls and adapt our product offering to changing market conditions. Cash flow continues to improve, with operating free cash flow standing at 15% of revenues in Q2 09. We are also pleased to have grown our market share by 0.7 percentage points over the quarter.

In Central America, Honduras grew its subscriber base by 19% year on year, despite the entry of a third operator at the end of Q4 08. Guatemala grew its subscriber base by 18% year-on-year and El Salvador by 17%.

In South America, total subscribers increased by 17% year-on-year with Bolivia showing growth of 51%. In Colombia, the increase in subscribers was 5%, and in Paraguay it was 15%.

In Africa, the best performing markets in terms of net subscriber additions were Chad which grew by 93% year-on-year, adding 110 thousand net new subscribers in Q2 09, and Tanzania, which grew by 81% year- on-year, adding 413 thousand net new subscribers in Q2 09. In Senegal, total subscribers increased by 26% and 144 thousand net new subscribers were added in Q2 09, which is indicative of the continuing trust that subscribers are placing in the Tigo brand.

The topic of the planned sale of the company's Asian assets, Grahne added, "The disposal of our Asian assets is in progress and expressions of interest have been received from a number of parties for the three assets. We expect the disposal to be completed by Q1 2010."

Capex is expected to be approximately $750 million in 2009 (excluding capex relating to Asia of approximately $100m). The EBITDA margin is expected to be maintained at the current level for the full year. Millicom expects operating free cash flow to be in the mid teens as a percentage of revenues for the 2009 year.

Emerging Markets Telecoms Adopt Cautious Approach In Capital Spending

­Debt ratings agency, Fitch Ratings said today that the challenging macro-economic outlook is driving emerging market telecoms to adopt a more cautious stance on capital spending for 2009. In a new report, Fitch compares technology development and investment trends across Emerging Asia, Latin America, Russia/CIS and Africa, and examines currency risks stemming from the recent devaluation of most emerging market currencies.

"With the exception of Africa and China where infrastructure investment is expected to increase by about 10% and 20% respectively, other regions are expected to report broadly stable-to-declining capex in 2009," noted Priya Gupta, Director in Fitch's Asia-Pacific Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT) team.

"Russia, in particular, is braced for sharp cuts, with many regional fixed-line incumbents expected to slash their capex by over 50% from the previous year, and mobile operators to reduce budgets by up to 25%," commented Nikolay Lukashevich, Senior Director and Fitch's Head of Russian/CIS Corporates.

Supported by capex rationing in 2009 as well as relatively resilient earnings in the recessionary environment, Fitch expects credit quality across the emerging markets to broadly register a stable-to-improving trend; although much will also depend on the competitive environment within individual markets, exposure to currency risk, event-risk related to M&A and/or capital management policies.

Fitch notes that growth in cellular (2G) services is slowing as penetration is now quite high in many emerging markets, while 3G services are yet to gain traction. Meanwhile, broadband is emerging as a key growth driver, although the agency expects medium-term growth to be constrained by low PC penetration in many emerging markets.

Fitch notes that the recent devaluation (in H208 through Q109) of most emerging market currencies against the US dollar is negative for telecom players, as it typically inflates capital spending and increases the cost of servicing dollar-denominated debt. Against this backdrop, the agency takes positive note of the fact that most rated Asian, African and Latin American emerging market operators (with the exception of the Argentinian telecoms) have limited exposure to foreign currency debt after hedging.

"After debt restructuring by Telefonica de Argentina and Telecom Argentina following the Argentine crisis of 2002, the two companies remain exposed to a currency mismatch between debt and cash flow generation," said Sergio Rodriguez, Director in Fitch's Latin American TMT team. "However, this is substantially mitigated by low leverage at less than 1.0x for both companies at end-2008," he added.

In Emerging Asia, Fitch notes that several companies have significant forex debt exposure, although in most cases this is substantially mitigated by low leverage as well as natural and purchased hedging measures. Within the portfolio, stand-outs include Indonesian operator PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk (XL, 'BB-' (BB minus)/Stable) and Sri Lanka's Dialog that have about a 50% share of foreign exchange debt and exhibit leveraged profiles; - however their currency risks are moderated by partial hedging (at XL) and significant forex earnings (at Dialog).

In Russia however, some telecoms operators are facing significant currency risks. For various reasons (including the scarcity of long-term, inexpensive Russian rouble financing), some telecom companies, particularly mobile operators, have preferred to predominantly raise foreign currency-denominated debt. Although this has allowed them to economise on interest payments in the good times, further significant rouble devaluation could significantly impair their financial flexibility.

A copy of the special report is available on the Fitch website (registration required).