Welcome to our annual results highlights for the year ended 31st of March 2025. As we draw the curtain on our Vision 2025 strategy, I'm immensely proud of the progress we have made over the past 5 years, where we merged as a purpose-led leading African operator, with clear opportunities to positively impact society and accelerate our growth.
This transformation was achieved despite the challenging macroeconomic environment marked by a global health crisis, currency volatility, geopolitical tensions, inflationary pressures and protracted energy disruptions in South Africa.
Our purpose of connecting people for a better future has remained our [ True North ] through Vision 2025. It has gathered the momentum of its own as we've advanced our 3 pillars: empowering people, protecting the planet and maintaining trust. Providing connectivity to empower people is at the core of our strategy.
To close the digital divide, we are expanding our coverage for new rural sites to fiber and to space. We actively pursue underserviced areas and leverage partnerships to accelerate connectivity. For example, in the DRC, we have announced a partnership with Orange to build, own and operate 2,000 solar-powered rural base stations. Once connectivity is available, we drive access to smartphones and support data affordability.
In financial year 2025, we began to scale our prepaid handset financing initiative and launched additional lower-cost devices. Leveraging our connectivity reach, our tech for good solutions plays a vital role in addressing challenges across critical sectors, including agriculture, education, energy and health care.
Agricultural productivity is crucial to Africa's economic future. We offer digital agricultural solutions that streamline input distribution, provide access to insurance and funding, unlock market opportunities and facilitate payments and subsidies. While these serve more than 10 million registered beneficiaries in the agricultural sector. The group's digital education solutions and partnerships provides more than 2.5 million learners with access to educational resources tailored to specific country needs.
We have many initiatives, including the e-learning platforms across our footprint. I'm particularly passionate about our gender-based programs, including M-Mama, support against gender-based violence, Code Like A Girl, Je Suis Cap, our female leadership program and inclusive procurement. We also support the digital inclusion of people with disabilities through tailored propositions and support services, as well as assisted technologies, accessible customer services and digital literacy programs.
In FY 2025, we hosted our inaugural accessibility conference, marking a significant step towards promoting digital inclusion for persons with disabilities in Africa, with support youth in Africa in pursuing technology-based career paths. This year, we launched a bold new ambition called the Techstart program. Techstart, in collaboration with AWS, Microsoft and Skillsoft, aims to upskill 1 million African youth by 2027 through a combination of classroom-based training and online learning.
Under our Planet pillar, we have committed to net zero for Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. All our markets have initiatives addressing renewable energy, energy efficiency, circularity and reducing supply chain emissions. In addition to this commitment, we partner with governments and other stakeholders to provide solutions to meet Africa's environmental challenges. A recent deal with South Africa's power utility, Eskom, is a prime example. We are implementing a fully auditable, real-time system that tracks coal from pit to burn, significantly improving efficiency.
In an ever-changing environment, we remain committed to doing what is right. Over the last 5 years, we have emerged as an ESG leader and expect to be even more progressive over the next 5 years. Over the last 5 years, Vision 2025 has been central to our ambition of being Africa's leading communications company. We expanded into new African markets by acquiring Vodafone Egypt and rolling out the greenfield operation in Ethiopia as part of a Safaricom led consortium. We are market leaders across our footprint, except in Ethiopia, where we are the challenger as a new entrant.
Our geographic diversification and increased scale were key milestones of Vision 2025. In financial year 2020, South Africa contributed 71% of the group's operating profit. 5 years later, its contribution is 55%, with Egypt contributing a significant 28%. The geographic expansion also supported our customer base growth of 96 million customers in the last 5 years. We now serve 211 million customers across the footprint that includes the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania, which, combined, has a population of 574 million people.
With connectivity at our core, we want to connect our customers via air, land or space. Our infrastructure scale supports this ambition. With 48,000 sites across the continent, we are 1 of Africa's largest tower owners.
Beyond infrastructure, I am passionate about connecting our customers to smartphones. At 64% penetration, we are using prepaid device financing bundles and low-cost devices to bridge the gap for the remaining 80 million customers, who still don't have a smartphone. Prepaid handset financing allows a customer to repay the phone daily or as they generate income.
In addition to the progress made in connectivity and geographical reach, we have also driven product diversification as a part of Vision 2025. At the heart of this evolution is our financial service business, which already has 88 million customers. This slide provides more detail on our product diversification with 4 critical segments.
In financial year 2020, Prepaid Voice was 31% of our service revenue. Today, Prepaid Voice makes up 18% of service revenue and remained flat in the period despite structural pressures. We expect Prepaid Voice to remain as an important contributor to the group, as we will manage its contribution over the medium term. There are pockets of growth across the portfolio, including DRC, Egypt and Tanzania on voice.
To deliver on our growth ambitions, we are well positioned with our other product segments, which have increased their contribution significantly since financial year 2020. Prepaid Data makes up 29.1% of service revenue and is now 60% larger than Voice. We continue to complement the structural growth in data traffic demand with increased network coverage, increased smartphone penetration and improved data monetization. This supported excellent growth of 24.2% in the year.
Our contract revenue is largely from South Africa and Egypt, and contributes 26.1%. While our customers demand a best-in-class experience, there is a nonnegotiable focus area for our contract customers. Our value proposition in contract is further enhanced with loyalty, insurance and content offerings.
Shifting our focus to another fast-growing product segment, our Beyond Mobile services. This segment includes fixed, digital and financial services and IoT. In the fiber space, we are working on co-investment models to accelerate rollouts across all markets. In South Africa, we were disappointed that the MAZIV transaction was prohibited by the competition tribunal, and have launched an appeal with the Competition's Appeals Court. Given that fiber is a critical enabler of inclusive economic growth, we remain steadfast in our believe that this transaction holds significant public interest in pro competitive benefits.
In Financial Services, which is the largest component of Beyond Mobile, we are growing across our markets with products that cut across both consumers and merchants. Vodacom's success in this segment is a function of strategic focus. In the slides to come, I will talk you through our road map for Financial Services, which we believe will see this revenue compound at a healthy rate.
Pulling together our connectivity, digital and financial service offerings we partner with businesses to accelerate their growth with governments to drive efficiencies. We are transforming the ways of working through digital technology in high-growth areas like cloud, hosting, managed security, managed services and IoT.
Our next strategic phase, Vision 2030, builds on the success of Vision 2025 and unlocks an accelerated growth trajectory. Our purpose will continue to lead our strategic direction and 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 can create a better future for all.
The first of our 3 strategic imperatives is about the customer. With our footprint population projected to reach 650 million by 2030, we have a significant opportunity to expand access, drive innovation and provide affordable services. As we grow our customer base, we will deliver an exceptional customer experience focused on simplified propositions and loyalty.
Our second imperative is innovating for growth as we diversify our revenue beyond mobile. Achieving market leadership across all forms of connectivity, including fixed, is a strategic priority. In fixed, we plan to leverage partnerships and [ co-builds ] to scale our ambitions. As we innovate beyond mobile, we are committed to driving inclusion.
Smartphone penetration is a priority for us, unlocking opportunities for digital services and financial inclusion. Our financial services empower millions across Africa to participate in the formal economy by providing accessible, reliable and innovative digital payment platforms. We expect to meaningfully grow our customer base and deepen our product suite. As we pull together our scale and leadership and connectivity, digital and financial services, we have been integrated solutions provider of choice for our customers. This will power our growth in beyond mobile services.
Finally, we believe that investing in our connectivity scale, differentiated platforms and a future-ready workforce are strategic enablers of growth. As we expand our talent pipeline embed Gen AI training at scale and foster and engage frontline first culture, we will support exceptional customer experience. Despite being 1 of Africa's largest tower owners, we recognize the value of infrastructure sharing and strategic partnerships to expand coverage and enhance efficiencies. We also see opportunities to harness synergies and scale from Vodafone and across our group to achieve operating model efficiencies and optimize assets, services and capabilities.
For each of these ambitions, we have set clear ambitious 2030 targets. The key outcome for you, our shareholders, are listed on the right. We now target upgraded growth of double-digit service revenue and EBITDA over the medium term, while retaining our attractive returns profile. This slide sets out our growth road map for Financial Services under Vision 2030. We already make a meaningful contribution to financial inclusion across our footprint.
Once financially included, we provide customers with an ecosystem that deepens their access to financial services with products like international remittances, global payments, bill payments, savings, wealth, lending and insurance. Tanzania is a prime example of how we have deepened inclusion. Today, only 41% of our M-Pesa revenue from peer to peer and cash on, whereas 3 years ago, this was 83%. Further evidence of Tanzania's success is in its contribution of M-Pesa to service revenue. This now stands at 39%, and is just behind Kenya.
Looking ahead, the next step of our road map is unlocking economic growth through financial services. We want to partner with like-minded companies to create a savings culture for consumers through wealth products and an environment for SMEs to thrive. This is where our super apps play a crucial role. They create an open platform, where we can integrate our own products with thousands of external service providers. As we execute on this road map, we expect to meaningfully scale our financial service customer base to 120 million customers.
Similarly, we expect to scale Financial Services revenue. Across our consolidated markets, we target between 15% and 20% compounded annual growth to financial year 2030, supporting the group's earning profile. In this slide, we provide proof points on our financial services ecosystem. We refer to it as dual-sided, as it caters for both merchants and consumers.
Our M-Pesa merchant base increased 24% to more than 1.2 million. This growth helps expand our addressable commission pool beyond peer-to-peer payments and withdrawals into both online and off-line commerce. In South Africa, our merchant acquiring business is also growing steadily, with over 11,300 merchants.
In the consumer space, our super apps are scaling across the group. M-Pesa app users are at [ 6.7 million ] supporting higher ARPUs. In Egypt, Vodafone Cash is the go-to mobile wallet in the country, with app users reaching 18 million by year-end. In South Africa, we successfully merged our telecommunications app My Vodacom into VodaPay during the year. This supported rapid growth in active VodaPay users, which reached almost 2 million.
A key use case for the One App strategy is the distribution of airtime. In VodaPay, our direct airtime sales has reached 10% of prepaid airtime sales. As users come into the app to top up, we leverage the rest of the marketplace to sell 1 more service. On the right-hand side of the slide, we call out our key growth drivers for financial services in the next financial year. Across all markets, we will deepen financial inclusion, such as savings and loans. For our international markets, these services have already reached 40% of M-Pesa revenue.
In Egypt, growth is underpinned by user adoption. We added 3.2 million customers over the last 12 months to reach 11.4 million customers. Into financial year 2026, we are partnering with Egypt's largest bank to support our scale and growth ambitions. South Africa's financial service growth was fueled by insurance in FY 2025, and we expect this to remain a key focus driver into financial year 2026.
As we see product success like insurance in a market, we're leveraging it into the rest of the group. This is also true for global payments, e-commerce, lending, wealth and savings, which we are scaling across our footprint.
As a group, including Safaricom, we have grown our financial services customers by 11.1% to 88 million. The scope of future growth is material, with penetration of our base at just 42%. The scale of our Financial Services business is reflected in the transaction value and volumes processed through our mobile money platforms. We processed USD 451 billion of transactions over the last 12 months, which equates to USD 1.2 billion every day.
Our financial service revenue from our consolidated entities reached ZAR 14 billion in the year, up 7.6% in rands. The underlying growth trend of 17.6%, which adjusts for foreign currency, confirms how quickly we are scaling financial services. With an additional ZAR 23 billion generated by Safaricom, this implies a combined fintech footprint that annualizes close to ZAR 37 billion or USD 2 billion. This is really a formidable business.
Overall, Financial Services contributed 11.6% to the group's consolidated service revenue. This was supported by the rapid revenue growth in Egypt. At Safaricom, which is an associate, the contribution increased again and reached 43%. Then looking at the contribution to profit before tax, which includes Safaricom, the weighting from Financial Services is around 20%. The bottom line contribution of financial services means that Vodacom's investment case offers something quite different to a typical emerging market telco.
Turning to the group's results. We reported a strong finish to the year, highlighting our earnings potential as we moved past the recent currency devaluations. Our customers provide the foundation of our growth. We grew customers by 8 million in the year to 211 million customers. This commercial momentum was evident in our revenue, which reached ZAR 152 billion, up 10.9% on a normalized basis.
The reported growth of 1.1% was impacted by the Egyptian devaluation in March 2024. Group service revenue growth was 11.2% on a normalized basis, exceeding our mid-single-digit target. This result reflected excellent growth from Egypt of 45.2% in local currency, comfortably above inflation levels in the market and good growth in our Beyond Mobile services across the group.
Group EBITDA was ZAR 55.5 billion and declined 1.1% due to the translation effects of the Egyptian pound devaluation. On a normalized basis, EBITDA growth was 7.8%, in line with our target range. Egypt delivered a particularly impressive local currency result with EBITDA growth of 70.4%. South Africa's EBITDA grew 2.3%, supported by cost initiatives, but impacted by lower wholesale revenues. Our international business recovered in the second half, but still had a disappointing result with EBITDA down 10.9%.
Excellent growth in Tanzania of 20.5% was offset by one-off costs in the DRC and revenue pressures from repricing in Mozambique. Net profit for the group increased 3.3% to ZAR 19.9 billion. Normalizing for currencies, growth was 13.6%, providing a good signpost for our potential into financial year 2026.
Consistent with the net profit result, our HEPS improved significantly in the second half and ended at ZAR 0.857, up 1.3%. Our capital expenditure intensity was within our guidance of 13% to 14.5% of revenue, having spent ZAR 20.3 billion in the year.
Finally, looking at the dividend, the Board has declared a final dividend of ZAR 0.335 per share, bringing the total dividend for the year to ZAR 0.620 per share. The full year dividend was up 5.1% despite the FX pressures we faced in the year.
Vodacom's geographic mix balances growth opportunities and strong cash generation. A look at our customer split shows that we have 4 similarly sized segments. Of our 211 million customers, 78% are outside South Africa. From a revenue perspective, South Africa remains the largest component. Revenue in South Africa grew 2.8%, impacted by a reset to wholesale revenues. International revenue of ZAR 32.3 billion was up 4.6% on a reported basis, impacted by a stronger rand. The normalized growth was 9.3%, supported by good growth in data and M-Pesa.
Egypt delivered revenue of ZAR 30.8 billion, contributing 20% to the group. On a reported basis, growth was down 5.4% due to the pound's devaluation in the prior year. In local currency, revenue growth was up an impressive 49.7%, well ahead of inflation. Safaricom had an excellent year, with revenue up 21.7% in rands and 11.2% in shillings. This was driven by double-digit growth in Kenya and accelerated commercial momentum in Ethiopia.
Turning to operating profit. In the first half, we reported a decline of 5.2%, but we're back to growth for the full year. In the second half, the Ethiopian devaluation moderated, and we lapped the Egyptian devaluation. On a normalized basis, operating profit was up 10.9%, a fantastic result. The operating profit result in South Africa was consistent with the revenue and EBITDA result.
In our international business, operating profit declined by 25.2%. This was disappointing, but also includes the impact of our 5.7% direct stake in Ethiopia and associated foreign exchange losses. Egypt delivered a stellar result. Operating profit growth was 16.9% in rands, with local currency growth of 97.5%. Normalizing for last year's FX loss, operating profit growth was a very impressive 65.4%.
Finally, to Safaricom. Their contribution increased 22.9% to ZAR 3.3 billion, recovering strongly in the second half, supported by an excellent result in Kenya. Shifting now to a product lens and looking at the contribution of our Beyond Mobile services to each of our geographic segments. These high-growth services include financial and digital services, IoT and fixed. In South Africa, 17.8% of service revenue is now attributable to Beyond Mobile, up from 16.6% in the prior year. This reflects ongoing growth in financial services and excellent growth in fixed.
Egypt's Beyond Mobile contribution is scaling quickly due to Vodafone Cash, digital and fixed. At a 17.3% contribution, these services are collectively growing more than 60% year-on-year. Across our international business, the contribution of Beyond Mobile was 32.4%, while Safaricom continues to set the benchmark at 48%.
Under Vision 2030, we intend to scale each of these Beyond Mobile revenue streams into successful businesses. We target a service revenue contribution of 30% for our consolidated operations by 2030.
Turning now to our 4 segments. Our South African business demonstrated continued resilience, achieving service revenue growth of 2.3%. This was led by a recovery in the prepaid segment, a strong year for consumer contract and the increasing contribution of our beyond mobile services. Results were impacted by pressure in the wholesale segment, which diluted service revenue by 1.9 percentage points.
Beyond mobile services was up 10% and contributed ZAR 11.2 billion. Fixed service revenue was up an excellent 17.9%, excluding low-margin wholesale transit revenue. Financial Services was up 7.9% to ZAR 3.4 billion, supported by a strong result for insurance. Customers were down 11% to 46 million as we optimize gross adds lower and churned inactive customers. The result in customer base delivered a healthier fourth quarter ARPU and a good prepaid result. Data traffic increased 36.4% for the year, reflecting the investment we've made into network and into spectrum.
Looking at our key revenue drivers, mobile contract customer revenue increased by 3.8% to ZAR 24.4 billion. This was supported by good growth in consumer, as we implemented another round or more-for-more pricing. Prepaid revenue growth stepped up to 3.5% for the year, reflecting a stronger second half. The result was supported by increased focus on rate management. This will remain a key focus into financial year 2026, as well prepaid handset financing.
Vodacom business service revenue declined by 2.3% to ZAR 16.9 billion, reflecting pressure on wholesale revenue. Excluding wholesale revenue, Vodacom business service revenue was up 5.6%. Cloud hosting and security supported this growth, with revenue for this segment up 35.6%. South Africa delivered EBITDA growth of 2.3% to ZAR 33.6 billion. This was a function of excellent cost control, with cost growth contained well below inflation.
With the wholesale headwind behind us in South Africa, we are targeting mid-single-digit EBITDA growth for financial year 2026. This will require an ongoing focus on efficiencies as well. We see structural opportunities for cost savings through more sharing. In South Africa, we recently approached the Competition Commission with MTN to advance our sharing agenda. This will be done under the provisions of government's energy user block exemptions regulations.
Egypt had a stellar performance in financial year 2025. We achieved service revenue of ZAR 27.7 billion, contributing 23% to the group. Service revenue for the year was up 45.2% in local currency. This growth was broad based across all the segments. Data traffic was up 28% despite price increases in the year. Appetite for data was also apparent in our data customer growth of 8.2% to 31.5 million.
Smartphones in the network were up 13.1%. Egypt delivered excellent growth in beyond mobile services for the year. Financial Services revenue was ZAR 2.2 billion, accounting for 8% of service revenue. In local currency, Vodafone Cash service revenue was up an impressive 80.1%. Egypt also posted strong growth in fixed and IoT. Egypt's EBITDA growth was 70.4% in local currency and contributed ZAR 13.4 billion to group EBITDA, or 24.2%.
The reported EBITDA margin of 43.7% was up 3.5 percentage points, reflecting excellent cost control and the impact of foreign exchange losses in the prior year. Net income growth was 99%, a truly excellent result. Service revenue for our international business increased 2.6% to ZAR 30.6 billion, impacted by a stronger rand. From a market perspective, local currency growth of 20.5% in Tanzania, 10.4% in Lesotho and 8.2% U.S. dollar growth in the DRC.
Mozambique had a challenging year due to repricing and post-election tensions. Encouragingly, Mozambique's commercial momentum improved in March 2025, providing scope for a better financial year 2026. Customers were up nicely at 11% to 60 million. International business data traffic growth of 29.6% with 25.9% smartphone user growth. I was particularly pleased with the pace of smartphone penetration. Normalized M-Pesa revenue growth was up 11.4% to reach ZAR 8.4 billion, contributing 27.3% of international business service revenue.
Growth was supported by an excellent performance in Tanzania and new growth areas such as lending, savings and merchant services. For example, loans facilitated across our international business increased 29.5% to ZAR 21.9 billion.
International business EBITDA was ZAR 9.5 billion and declined by 10.9% on a normalized basis. This was a disappointing result that reflected revenue pressure in Mozambique and the impact of bad debts and ad hoc supplier escalations in the DRC. We anticipate a clear improvement in EBITDA growth and margins in financial year 2026.
Safaricom delivered an excellent year. 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. This result in the declaration of a stable dividend represents important milestones for Safaricom as it scales the greenfield rollout in Ethiopia.
Double clicking then briefly at Kenya and then Ethiopia. Service revenue in Kenya was underpinned by M-Pesa revenue growth of 15.2%. The M-Pesa result was driven by strong customer growth of 10.5% and excellent platform engagement. Kenyan mobile data revenue was another source of strong growth, up 15.2% and supported by customer and traffic growth with strong adoption of our 4G services.
Fixed service revenue grew 12.9%, supported by 16.6% growth in customer fixed revenue. The strong revenue performance sets up strong profitability. Kenya EBITDA returned 10.1% with margins at an industry-leading 54%.
Switching to Ethiopia, we reached 8.8 million customers, doubling year-on-year. Revenue increased 172%, with strong growth in ARPU adding to the customer traction. Looking into financial year 2026, Safaricom is guiding to another excellent year for Kenya while also forecasting lower losses for Ethiopia. The table on the right of the slide sets this out. The combination of Kenya's growth and Ethiopia scaling means that the Safaricom Group is expected to grow EBIT by around 50% in financial year 2026. This would clearly have a positive impact on our earnings outlook for the coming year.
Vodacom is structurally well positioned for growth. Over 3 decades, we have built Vodacom Group into a purpose-led business with a footprint reaching 36% of Africa's GDP. We are a market leader across our footprint with a unique opportunity to drive inclusion.
Our asset rich portfolio is another point of differentiation, as we own most of our towers and mobile infrastructure. The combination of our connectivity and financial services scale means that we can consistently deliver returns above our cost of capital.
Looking ahead and leveraging these attributes, we have set clear targets for Vision 2030. Our customer base is at the heart of why we exist, a key to our long-term success. To earn customer loyalty and deliver an exceptional experience, we will focus on loyalty and simplified propositions. As we execute on this priority, we'll strive to obtain Network Promoter Score leadership in all our markets and reach a target of 260 million customers by 2030.
Vodacom has always been an innovative company. It's part of our DNA. As we innovate beyond mobile, we remain committed to driving inclusion and retaining market leadership. Smartphone penetration is a key enabler of inclusion and a priority for us. We have set ourselves a target of 75% by 2030. We also want to diversify our revenue mix, reflecting our role as an integrated solutions provider of choice, with the contribution of Beyond mobile services approaching 30% of group service revenue in our plan.
Market leadership also extends to fintech, where we will increase our financial services customer base to 120 million customers by 2030. Finally, we believe that investing in our connectivity scale, differentiated platforms and a future-ready workforce are strategic enablers of growth. Our commitment to diversity remains strong, with an ambitious gender target aimed at increasing female representation at management levels to 50% by 2030. We will continue to reduce energy consumptions through efficiencies, alternative energy and innovation. Our target is to achieve net zero operations for Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2035.
As we leverage all of these opportunities, we set ourselves a target to generate double-digit EBITDA growth over the medium term. Above all else, our next strategic phase, we will focus on simplifying and scaling our existing operations as we relentlessly pursue our purpose to connect people for a better future. We look forward to engaging with you over the coming weeks on our investor road shows. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention.
It gives me a great pleasure to unpack our results for the year ended 31st of March 2025. The results show significant improvement in our bottom line that result -- as a result of the second half of the year compared with the first half, as we had expected.
My opening slide sets out our group highlights. We achieved 1.1% revenue growth to reach ZAR 152 billion. This is a pleasing result given that in this period, the Egyptian pound devalued by more than 60% in March 2024. Group service revenue and EBITDA, which declined 0.1% and 1.1%, respectively, both reflect an improved trend from the first half.
Our beyond mobile services continue to grow pleasingly, underpinned by financial services. As we move into the next strategic phase our Vision 2030, we set our size of reaching a 30% contribution from beyond mobile. The group EBITDA margin was 36.5%, down 0.8 percentage points year-on-year, reflecting a disappointing year on our international business.
Pleasingly, EBITDA margin in South Africa was stable, while in Egypt, we improved the normalized margin by 0.5 percentage points to 45%, reflecting excellent cost containment. HEPS grew 1.3% to ZAR 0.857 per share, representing a significant recovery in the second half of the financial year. South Africa, Egypt and our associates contributed to the earnings growth, while the international business detracted.
Return on capital employed, or ROCE, was 23.5%, up 0.4 percentage points on the prior year. This reflects good capital allocation. Looking ahead, our ROCE will be included in management's LTI targets. Our balance sheet remains in healthy position, with leverage sustained at 0.9x. Our leverage position was supported by excellent free cash flow generation of ZAR 18.2 billion.
From a shareholder perspective, our Board declared a final dividend of ZAR 0.335 per share, which equates to a full year dividend of ZAR 0.620 per share. This represents growth of 5.1%, representing a payout ratio of 78%. Vodacom is evidently one of the highest dividend payouts on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, reflecting our excellent cash generation and strong balance sheet.
The fourth quarter represented our strongest service revenue result for the year, both from a reported and normalized perspective. This provides us with a good momentum into the new financial year FY '26. For the quarter, group service revenue grew by 13.5% on a normalized basis, well above our inflation footprint.
The result highlights the growth profile of our diversified portfolio and strong commercial execution. The quarter also marked a return to rent reported growth as we lapped the March 2024 devaluation in Egypt. South Africa service revenue grew 3.4% in the fourth quarter, the highest growth for the year.
The quarterly result was supported by sustained growth in prepaid revenue and an excellent result in fixed revenue. Service revenue of our international business increased 2.6% to ZAR 30.6 billion for the full year, impacted by a stronger rent. In the fourth quarter, service revenue in international business saw growth acceleration to 9.2% as Mozambique's commercial momentum improved in March. Egypt delivered service revenue of ZAR 27.7 billion in the year, contributing 23% to the group.
The service revenue in local currency accelerated to 47.7% in the fourth quarter. The final quarter of the year in Egypt was supported by a strong commercial campaign as well as price adjustments implemented across mobile and fixed services in December. Whilst we are pleased with our exit trend for the year, we must acknowledge that the macro cycle has had a material impact on our earnings.
We estimate the impact to be around ZAR 2.41 per share over the last 3 years, significantly and despite the numerous geopolitical headwinds, the second half represented a period of stability for us. In fact, there were no material macro impacts to call out for our EPS. This marks a pleasant change from the prior period. Despite this outcome, we remain conscious of the global tariff debate, which do not appear to have a material or direct impact on us.
We are also pleased that mitigating strategies, which are reflected through our geographic and product revenue diversification, our localized cost structures and balance sheet position meant that we were able to weather this macro cycle with limited impact on cash generation or leverage.
During the year, we refinanced ZAR 11 billion and repaid ZAR 2.4 billion of our most expensive debt. On the right of the slide, we set out our multiyear free cash flow profile. FY '25 was another excellent year, as we generated ZAR 18.2 billion of free cash flow. Our free cash flow generation supported unchanged group leverage of 0.9x net debt to EBITDA despite a ZAR 2.9 billion investment into the 5G license payment in Egypt.
We reported headline earnings per share of ZAR 0.857, up 1.3%. As already noted, the full year result reflected 2 very different trends in the first and the second half of the year. In the second half, headline earnings per share growth recovered to 23.5%, supported by a strong performance from our operations and a period of macro stability.
For the full year, Mozambique, DRC and FX losses from Ethiopia detracted around ZAR 0.80 per share from the full year result. Earnings from the rest of our operations positively contributed ZAR 0.92 per share, supported by growth in South Africa, Egypt and Kenya.
From reflecting backwards to forward-looking, from a position of commercial and balance sheet strength, we are well positioned to accelerate our growth. Diversifying our beyond mobile services is a key priority for the group, and improving our customer proposition. On a consolidated basis, with South Africa, Egypt and international business in scope, we saw that our beyond mobile services revenue contributed 21.4% of group service revenue, up from 20% in the prior year. Encouragingly, there was progress across all our markets.
Looking ahead, our Vision 2030 ambition is to increase this contribution to around 30% in the next 5 years. The largest weighting within Beyond mobile is our financial services portfolio. We see the scope for revenue in this business to compound at 15% to 20% over the 5 years as we deepen financial inclusion across our markets.
In addition to financial services, we intend to scale our IoT, fixed and digital service revenue to complement the growth in our core mobile. In my concluding slide, I set out our medium-term targets. With the strong foundations from our Vision 2025 and as we execute on Vision 2030, we are well positioned to accelerate growth and deliver attractive returns with a portfolio of market-leading assets across Africa.
As a result, we have upgraded our medium-term targets for group service revenue and EBITDA growth from high single digit to double-digit growth. Our guidance for group capital intensity of 13% to 14.5% remains unchanged. These targets are on average over the next 3 years, based on prevailing economic conditions.
These targets are not without challenges. Notably, the macro outlook remains uncertain with both global growth concerns and local factors. More positively, as evident in our second half, inflation and FX trends have stabilized, at least in the short term. Safaricom, an associate of the group, provided its own guidance for FY '26. Safaricom is expecting another excellent year for Kenya, while forecasting lower losses for Ethiopia. This should provide Vodacom Group with good upside potential for earnings growth in the coming year.
On that note, I will conclude and thank you for your attention.
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Good afternoon and good morning to those joining the call in the U.S. Welcome to the highlights call for our year ended 31st of March 2025. I'm joined by our Group CFO, Raisibe Morathi, as well as our Head of Investor Relations, JP Davids. We trust that you enjoyed our video presentation we screened before this call. This 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 5 years. We have emerged as a purpose-led leading African operator with clear opportunities to positively impact society and accelerate our growth. This transformation was achieved despite the challenging macroeconomic environment.
Our purpose of connecting people for a better future has remained our True North through Vision 2025. It has gathered the momentum of its own as we advanced our 3 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 5 years, we've emerged as an ESG leader and expect to be even more progressive over the next 5 years. Vision 2025 has also shaped an investment case into 1 that combines attractive growth with excellent return prospects. These growth opportunities lie in our geographic and product diversification. We expanded into new markets by acquiring Vodafone Egypt and rolling out the 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. 5 years later, its contribution is 55%, with Egypt contributing a significant 28%. We have also built a formidable financial services business with 88 million customers that generates USD 2 billion of revenue, including Safaricom. This business is expected to compound revenues at 15% to 20% over the next 5 years.
Our return profile is supported by the combination of our market leadership positions in connectivity and financial services with our infrastructure scale. And financially at 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 5 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 can create a better future for all.
Switching gear to the results for financial year 2025. At a group level, revenue of ZAR 152.2 billion was up 1.1% despite significant foreign exchange headwinds. On a normalized basis and equivalent to a constant currency measure, group service revenue increased to 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 0.857 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 19.4% in the first half. On the back of the full year earnings, we announced the final year dividend of ZAR 6.20 that 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 USD 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 rands 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.
And then to 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. So this puts the underlying growth trend at around 4%. Pleasingly, our second half was stronger than the first. This improvement was led by prepaid revenue, which grew 3.5% in the year and 4.5% in the second half. The prepaid improvement was supported by an increased focus 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. We also reported good growth now beyond mobile services. Fixed 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 a strong result for 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 mid-single-digit EBITDA growth for South Africa. Lapping the 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 on the provisions of government's energy user block exemption regulation. We're also progressing with our virtual billing project with Eskom and hope to provide a joint update with the utility in the near term.
Separately, we were disappointed that the massive MAZIV transaction was prohibited by the Competition Tribunal, especially given that it has received support from Mikasa, our competitors and the South African government. Vodacom and CIVH have lodged an appeal with the Competition Appeals Court challenging the Competition Tribunal prohibitation. 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 local currency and translated to 19.2% growth in rands. Looking into FY 2026, we expect Egypt to deliver comfortably above our medium-term low target of 20%.
Our international business reported good service revenue growth, but had a disappointing EBITDA performance. Service revenue was ZAR 30.6 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 repricing. International EBITDA was ZAR 9.5 billion and declined by 13.8%. This was disappointing -- 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 FY '26, 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 -- our fourth 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 in the declaration of a stable dividend represented an important milestone for Safaricom as it scales the greenfield rollout in Ethiopia. In Kenya, service revenue growth was supported by excellent results for M-Pesa, mobile data and fixed. The strong revenue performance sets up strong profitability metrics. 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 ARPU growth adding to the customer traction. Looking into FY 2026, Safaricom is guiding 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 would clearly have a positive impact on our earnings outlook for the coming year. That concludes my review. Raisibe and I are now ready to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Shameel. For the audience, it's JP here, and thank you for all of the questions we've received on the platform. We'll kick off with questions from Preshendran from 36ONE. He's got a couple on SA and then 1 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. So those are the 2 SA questions, and a group question around the financial assets, noting that there's been a material increase in the credit loss associated with financial assets. Perhaps that one, you can take, Raisibe. Shameel, start with South Africa?
Sure. So I think, firstly, on the prepaid revenue or the voice revenue trends, we saw basically a minus 8.5 in Q4, where the full year was around minus 5. So a slight acceleration, but also in the last quarter, say the summer promotions and so on. So we're 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?
I did.
Yes. Sorry. And then ECLs?
Hi, everyone. So the question about the trend on ECL. So the main driver there is the DFC one-offs that we called out in the first half, fortunately -- really was just in the first half. And here, we did a bit of a detailed review of our book. And the exposure to government, they do eventually pay, but they just pay a bit slower.
And as a result, we took ECL. And as we stand right now, we are actually in a recoveries mode. But whilst looking at DRC, we basically just looked at government exposures across the board. So elevation is as a result of taking a more conservative view around the government exposures in particular.
Okay. Our next question is asked by both Jonathan from Prescient and Muyran from MIBFA, both just talking and asking about price increases. So 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.
And then I guess the point that both are making is those are looking a little bit higher than inflation at the moment. So can we see price increases of this type of nature going forward, sort of call it mid-single-digit when inflation is around 3% or 4%? So prospects for price increases on both prepaid and postpaid into FY '26?
Yes. I think the -- on postpaid, the price increase went in basically in March, around about 6%. But remember, the strategy is more for more. So effectively, we put the price up, but also give customers value, specifically more data for putting up the price. So essentially, that more-for-more strategy we've been doing now for close to 4 years. And I think it's well received, well accepted within the market.
In terms of prepaid, there it's more opportunistic, and it's all about rate management, to be frank. And more 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. And that's a combination of pricing increases removal, of certain bundle options and then, of course, making sure that we have a stronger handle on the outcome of our CVM promotions.
We have a few questions around the prepaid customer trend in the fourth quarter. Mike from Avior was asking around that. Rohit from Citi and Nadim from SBG. Nadim is also 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 shaped up with the rest of the industry? So the subscribers and then the market share.
Yes. So on the subscribers, it was a cleanup, and the cleanup would have affected the financial service numbers are affected the contract numbers and so on as well. But essentially, what we've done is basically deleted low-value, no-value sims, where -- and one of the structural problems in South Africa still is there's some washing machine, which we hope to fix with a new process for customer registration, which is an industry we're dealing with government. And once that's implemented, I think it will start to help fix -- there's some -- there's some wastages, I call it.
And when we look at the active 30-day base, it's still growing. So that's the base that we really look at internally versus the 90-day base. So there, we're still seeing good growth, and we're happy with the performance of the base. And also, when you delete the low value customers, what happens then -- or no value customers, your ARPU actually goes out. So it's just a tighter lens of deleting those customers so also you can get the numbers back quicker.
Okay. We've got a -- just sticking with South Africa, we will move to the other markets in a moment. On South Africa, Nadim want to do check in with us on SA handset revenue. You noted that declined modestly in the fourth quarter. Is there any feedback we have there?
And then perhaps switching gear to [ Raisibe ] and cost savings [indiscernible] of Matrix, just asking around elaborate a little bit more on South Africa's cost-saving initiatives, where these are coming from. And I don't know, who would prefer to take the question, but just around related to that, the sharing opportunity agenda with MTN South Africa. What's on the table there?
Yes. So on the sharing agenda, basically, what we're doing is effectively looking at where can we share more. And 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. So we're looking at how can we share more or what I call the noncompetitive parts of the network and help use that to drive down cost/optimize CapEx.
Okay. And then on SA's cost savings program, so in line with our Fit for Growth, which is a program that we've had for generations, so -- and every time you really identify areas to zoom into, so there was a detailed review line by line, run by [ CTO ] and [ TREF ] and the team and 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 need the widget that you are asking for, the pricing for different things, lots of RFPs with different suppliers.
I think more notably, we also changed a light contract on the field force operations. We have continued to look at optimizing the energy-related activities, more sharing agenda from within the group. And obviously, the sharing with MTN is also 1 of the initiatives that has been looked at.
So we are really pleased with the direction that the team in SA has taken. Of course, the other markets also doing similar things, but really excited about the outcomes of that and maintained cost growth at below inflation, whilst there's still some opportunities to support the business for growth.
Devices, basically, where we are is effectively seeing 2.7% growth for the full year. And you would have seen a minus 6.8% in Q4. Nothing to really worry about, there's 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, he's just asking around the telecom wholesale contract. Any expectations or color we can share on that into FY '26? And then a couple of questions from Cezar 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 '26? And then to what extent that could also track EBITDA -- with EBITDA could track service revenue growth into FY '26?
Yes. So let me start off with that one, which is essentially what we've communicated is that, look, the wholesale contracts cost us about 1.9%. We see more stability in that, given that we signed a long-term agreement with Cell C, we did an extension with Telkom, but also looking to sign a long-term agreement, but it won't be at different rates to what we -- or much reduced rates than what we have currently.
So we see a lot more stability in the wholesale segment going forward, and that will bode well into the numbers. So we put [ SS ] growth in EBITDA at between 4% and 5%, and the same on service revenue.
Okay. Last 1 on South Africa for the moment, and then we will switch to Egypt. So in South Africa, Preshendran just come back and said, comfortable with the answer around the group ECL discussion or expected credit loss discussion, but he just wanted to get an update on South Africa specifically around expected credit losses, if you can provide some commentary on that, Raisibe?
So I mean, similarly in South Africa, we have a strong paying government. So one of the contributors will be that. We also started a new product for handset financing called Easy2Own and taken a more conservative approach in terms of ECL provisioning. But it is still early days. So really, this is just a modeling issue. Not so much that the book has any problems.
And Easy2Own, just a reminder, is there 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. So yes, so we have taken a bit more ECL from that perspective, but it is a small book in the bigger scheme. So otherwise, it's just really in the normal cost. Nothing that registers out or problematic in terms of our book.
So switching gear to Egypt, Maddy from HSBC is asking a couple of questions on Egypt. Firstly, can the growth momentum be sustained without further price hikes? And related to that, what are our expectations for price hikes in Egypt? Then he's asking separately around the EBITDA margin in Egypt, why we're not seeing as much margin expansion perhaps as he was looking for, despite the strong revenue growth?
So 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. So what are we seeing on the net income margin? Maybe that can help complete the story.
Yes. So maybe just on the -- so firstly, on the price hikes. Essentially, we've had a price hike of 30% in December. So of course, that will carry on for the better part of this new fiscal until December next year. So you've got that price increase through.
I think from a -- remember, the justification of pushing the price increases hard was also devaluation. So that pressure is off with the stability in the currency now. So it's -- let's say, it's not an automatic every year price increase market. It's a -- if there's a disaster, we need our -- type of part of that.
That said, remember, it's got a structural price floor, and that structural price floor helps for everything to convert into strong revenue growth. So we have that in Tanzania, and we have that in Egypt, and that's why you're seeing the stronger growth coming through. And that's basically based on the health of the industry. And 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, and they were very proud, and so it is best practice that 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 spot as well. The margin on fiber is a bit lower because it's an ISP model, but it's -- it contributes higher on the net profit level. So that also helps to contribute on the net profit margin. The net profit margin is the highest in the group at about 25%. JP, correct?
That's spot on.
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. So there's a question from Nadim around expectations for elasticity. So I guess we've obviously put up the price, what are our thoughts around elasticity? Then perhaps 1 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 '26? That's from Rohit of Citi.
So I'll just quickly do with the minority dividend. We disclosed that together with the receipt of Safaricom's dividend, so a net number. The net number in FY 2025 was a 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 '26, I suppose we'd 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 both are positioned for very good growth into FY 2026. So expecting good growth from Safaricom and good growth from Vodafone Egypt. Shameel, back to you on the elasticity question.
Yes. I think on the elasticity part, what you will see, which you've seen in all markets, right, is when you do a price adjustment, there is an immediate effect in terms of a decrease in volume. But then over time, that recovers back because people still need to utilize the data. So general rule of thumb, about 4 months before it fully recovers. So -- but of course, more than offset in this case with the price increase, yes.
Maddy from HSBC has a question on international and specifically Mozambique. Just asking if the worst is behind us there?
Yes. I think what we are doing is still pushing for the price flow there. We don't have one now, to be upfront. But what we are seeing is we're now lapping the price changes that we made, we're fully competitive now in that market. So yes, it's now turned the corner. So you're lapping that and starting to be a lot more positive.
We want to see a lot more positivity. And we think that a price flow is the right way to ensure healthy investment, healthy returns, good sector and so on because you did have price dumping in that market. And that's the discussions we're currently having with the regulator.
There are a few more questions on South Africa. So we're going to go back there. Jono from Absa just wanted to get take on the MAZIV transaction. So if we don't get this ruling in our favor, what are our near-term and longer-term plans in the fiber space? And would you -- and he specifically wants to know around M&A. Would you consider M&A opportunities or rather perhaps pursue a partnership approach? So that's on the MAZIV transaction.
Then a separate question on the Rain roaming deal that we have? And over what sort of time frame does that come up for renewal? And to what extent do you still need additional capacity given our new -- our spectrum position post the auction? And if we can just squeeze in the third one on South Africa and then we'll pause. On the ECT, [ Aroni ] had a specific question on when the device is locked, can a user still connect to Wi-Fi?
So no, I can answer that one. The phone is basically a paper weight when you haven't unlocked. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a good incentive to recharge. And -- but perhaps Shameel, you can take the other 2?
Yes. So on the MAZIV transaction, effectively, I mean, look, we are -- the gearings will come up in July. What's the alternative? As I've been saying today, you might have heard in the media. The money is in the bank. So effectively, we have all the optionality in our stable in terms of what we can do and where can we invest.
Would we do another M&A transaction? No. I think being stuck for 3 years in the ComCom, 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. And that doesn't rule out that we'll do something in South Africa, but we're not going to go and sit in front of the ComCom for 3 years. So if you don't want our money, we'll go invest it somewhere else.
Perhaps 2 questions for Raisibe. The first one from Maddy of 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? So that's question 1. And then question 2 from Mike at Anchor Capital asking for an update around the Please Call Me matters and thoughts on any potential timing there?
So in terms of the free cash flow, yes, we are quite pleased with our progress in terms of our capital allocation, where we have increased -- paid the dividend at higher than 75%, noting that our policy is at least 75%. So we paid at 78% comprised of an even higher payout in the first half at 87% and 75% -- 71% for the final dividend, combined to 78%. Why we did that was it to give investors a little bit of a relief from the devaluation impacts coming out of Ethiopia.
We -- but now just bring this all to a close in terms of that capital allocation is that this is the year that we have paid off some of the expensive debt and increased the dividend to an extent that we thought appropriate and whilst continue to support our other internal purposes, i.e., CapEx, working capital and so on. And with our net debt-to-EBITDA remaining flat at 0.9x with the headroom for M&A should opportunities arise. And obviously more on the radar being the MAZIV transaction, should the approval come through.
So that gives you an indication of the flexibility that we'll apply as and when opportunities are right. But we do recognize that the delevering, there's still a road to go. So we paid off ZAR 2.4 billion and given an opportunity we'll continue that journey of making sure that we optimize on our debt holdings.
From a PCM 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. So we just wait at this point in time, waiting to hear the outcome from that process.
Maybe just on the -- sorry, we didn't answer the Rain question. So effectively, the Rain contracts start coming off from 2027, it's staggered different portfolios at different times. And of course, we will relook to renegotiate the terms, given that we're not under pressure anymore for spectrum. So I think that would be our stance on that.
And then to answer your question, when we do fiber, it will probably be in the form of JVs going forward. Just to be clear, we're not going on a buying or going into new markets approach. We'll rather double down in the markets that we're in. And we're trying to do as much as we can through partnerships, the logic being that at least we can -- we'll have a play in that fiber part because we don't have the money to do everything. And bringing on a partner, a like-minded partner will allow us, 1, we share the economics, but 2, to have a meaningful play in that context.
There's just been a request to -- just to cover again the dynamics we're seeing in terms of market share in South Africa, prepaid in particular? And then a separate question from David from New Street Research, asking around the strong performance he's noted in fixed services in South Africa. So where we're seeing -- where we're seeing this growth coming from? And any color around that would be appreciated.
Yes. So prepaid market share, we see more or less flattish in terms of overall performance on prepaid -- on prepaid market share. Of course, customers would have been impacted by the deletion. So we would have seen an uptick in customers and then over last year and then in the last quarter, clean up on the customers.
And fixed?
And then on fixed, yes, we've seen a nice step up. I think we've done very well in performance there. That's a lot of it is enterprise sales. So we've seen good performance on fiber, that's selling our own fiber, that's selling ISP 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 corporate.
We are getting a couple of follow-ups on our sharing agenda across the group. And so Justin from Nextgen, just asking around and the sharing agenda across our markets. And are we considering active brand sharing? And if that is possible, which sort of markets could we get to do that in?
Maddy is asking around a little bit more color on that MTN -- network sharing deal with MTN, or that cost-sharing deal with MTN. How many towers are we talking about? And does this involve the entire country or rural areas? I think Maddy, 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.
And so if you can just bear with us, we will give you more color in due course. But it's still at a point where we just need to respect the process and go through that with the ComCom. But on active sharing, Shameel?
Yes. So I mean, the DRC, 2000 towers is active sharing. So that will be an active sharing network. In other markets, we're looking at the opportunity where we'll -- basically, where we build example on rural sites. We will give access to our competitor, and they would give us access to their entire parts, so 1 builds on 1 side of the country, another part builds the other side of the country, and effectively, we share. So that would be the intent.
So effectively, we're looking at all forms of sharing. So the active sharing is one, towers is another. Fiber is another, and then basically looking at field force outsourcing is another. So we're looking at all forms of where can we optimize our costs and performance as well. And sometimes, it's as simple -- as our co-build, for example, would be -- let me give you an example of South Africa, where we did a national co-build. So we built with MTN and Liquid. Many years ago, we did a co-build from [ Gqeberha ] to Cape Town, as an example, yes. So -- and then we did another 1 from Cape Town to Devon.
So these are the type of things that you look at and you see how can you share costs. And that's one of the reasons why we were interested in the MAZIV deal because we see DFA as a sharing opportunity of being able to do that. We're also doing a lot more on our towers, given the fact that we have the largest amount of towers in SA, we look -- we have improved our customer service levels, all of that to make sure that we can attract more of the telcos businesses on to 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. And this, I guess, specific question related to the overall strategy is could this help us reduce backhaul costs?
Yes. So the way I see satellite is really in 3 blocks. Firstly, backhaul. I think backhaul is no-brainer. The LEO satellites effectively have lower latency and essentially are coming in much cheaper than the GEOs were. So there's a -- as your contracts expire and so on and so on, there's a clear opportunity to shop around and sell it.
There will also be multiple different options as the satellite comes -- as more and more satellite providers come of age. So my view is don't tie yourself in too long to any 1 letter that the prices settle and then sign a longer-term agreement or an agreement with the different providers. So I think key opportunity to put in perspective, we have about 1,200 towers across the group that's still using satellite. So that's the one.
The second body is direct-to-DISH, which is where Starlink is playing today and where Kuiper will be playing as well and also OneWeb. So you're getting more players that are coming in that context. And there we see, of course, it's important that the markets are licensed for satellite and not just for 1 player. And there, the -- what the model seems to be is both in the case of Starlink direct-to-consumer model, but also basically a model, where effectively you have the chance to resell their product as well.
That's not a cheap product. So effectively, what we saw was, initially, they were playing around what very competitive pricing and so on, but they've since moved away from that and rejigged their products to a higher revenue models and so on. So it's really where there isn't coverage. And then 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. And that will give a better experience, but you'll also have the likes of Starlink also doing it. But there's a different construct. Starlink is effectively like 7,600 satellites, I believe, is a number that's up at the moment. Where there's someone like -- AST would be like 80, 90 satellites, but 1 satellite is the size of a football field. So -- and they have very different propagation parts and so on.
And there, you have to work -- in both cases, you have to work through the telcos because the telcos, who hold the spectrum that these players need. So -- and so -- but there will always be limited capacity on satellite. We reckon that not more than 4% to 5% of our traffic in a country can be carried 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 back to you just to close off.
Yes. 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.
