South Africa's Vodacom reports quarterly slowdown in growth

South Africa’s Vodacom reported on Thursday a slowdown in quarterly group and service revenue growth, as its pricing-transformation strategy and transition of traffic between roaming partners dented revenue at home - its largest market.

The mobile phone company said group revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2018 rose 1.5 percent to 23 billion rand ($1.66 billion), under the previous IAS 18 accounting standard, compared with 6.7 percent jump last year.

While service revenue climbed 2.4 percent to 18.9 billion rand, compared with 5.5 percent growth in the year-ago period.

Using the new IFRS 15 system, group and service revenue dropped 2.1 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.

“In South Africa, service revenue declined 0.9 percent, affected by the effects of our pricing transformation strategy in order to reduce the cost to communicate, as well as the transitioning of traffic between our roaming partners,” Chief Executive Shameel Joosub said in a statement.

The unit of Britain’s Vodafone said service revenue from its international operations jumped 13.2 percent on the back of sustained data revenue growth and continued success of its mobile financial services platform, M-Pesa.