• Telkom’s trading update reports it grew revenue to R10.9 billion in the first quarter of 2025.
• The big driver of this success is an increased in mobile and fibre connections.
• Even Swiftnet is performing well, despite its imminent sale.

The first quarter of the 2025 financial year for Telkom came to a close on 30th June and the trading update for the quarter makes for an inspiring read.

The group’s revenue grew 3.9 percent to R10.9 billion on the back of strong mobile data revenue growth and a burgeoning fibre to the home connectivity rate.

“Telkom had a good start to the financial year with pleasing performance on the top line benefiting from our data-led strategy and compelling value propositions. Our next generation revenue streams continued their positive momentum and grew by R576 million, an increase of 7.0%. NGN revenues now comprise 80.7% of Group revenue,” Telkom Group chief executive officer, Serame Taukobong said in a statement.

The group says its achieved this success in spite of a tough economic environment. Both mobile and fixed line data are to thank for this performance with mobile subscribers rising by 16.6 percent to reach the 21 million user mark. Fixed line saw similar double-digit growth with fibre connections increasing by 19.5 percent, compared to Q1 2024.

“NGN broadband offerings, enabled by our ongoing capital investment in our mobile and fibre networks; have positioned Telkom advantageously as the best value mobile network while the connect-led strategy for our fibre network further improved the market-leading home connection rate to 49.0% for the quarter. These capex investments give our networks the capacity to accommodate and handle high data traffic demands from our retail and enterprise customers, on already existing mobile and fibre infrastructure,” reports Taukobong.

Even Telkom’s Swiftnet business, which is selling off some of its assets, performed well, drawing in revenue of R343 million. This is down to the focus on power-as-a-service, according to Telkom.

The biggest mover however, was BCX. The division only grew revenue by 2.4 percent but that revenue amounts to R1.7 billion. This was largely fuelled by the sale of IT hardware and software which saw revenues 22.5 percent higher than they were in the 2024 financial year. The telco says that its attacking the market from both a low-margin IT hardware and sales as well as high-margin IT services.

There is one black mark on this report however, Converged Communications. Here, revenue declined by 3.2 percent to R1.3 billion. This is as a result of the decline in use of legacy telephone lines. The good news is that data connectivity is on the rise, offsetting this decline.

With Swiftnet’s sale fuelling a turn around, Telkom may soon return to the heights it once occupied before its monopoly was upended.