Good afternoon, and good morning to those joining the call in the US. Welcome to the highlights call for our year ended 31st of March 2026.

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 that we screened before this call.

The video is available on our website and covers our purpose-led strategy called Vision 2030, and the performance against our strategic ambitions. For those not able to watch our presentation, I'll take you through some of the key highlights.

We'll then move into a Q&A session. What a great financial year, which showcased our geographical and product diversification and growth potential.

We delivered on our double-digit EBITDA growth target, setting up an excellent year for shareholder returns. Our full-year dividend totaled 735 cents per share, up 18.5%.

Return on capital employed expanded 4 percentage points to 27.5%, as we executed on our efficiency and sharing agenda to improve returns. We delivered hard-currency net income growth of 21.3% in euros.

A strong commercial performance also helped us deliver these shareholder outcomes. Customers were up 12.3% to 237 million.

This positioned us to upgrade our Vision 2030 customer target to 275 million from 260 million. Our financial services business, which is the leader on the African continent, continues to grow from strength to strength.

We upgraded our Vision 2030 target to 130 million financial services customers, having reached 103 million during the year. We see financial services a key differentiator for our customers and our investment case.

Financial services now makes up 28% of our profit before tax. In addition to our product diversification, we are also seeing clear benefits from our footprint.

We operate across eight markets in Africa, but manage the business in four segments. Starting in the north with Egypt, we reported a stellar set of results in financial year 2026.

Egypt contributed 15.3 billion rand to the group's operating profit, up 48.9% on a rand basis. The growth is broad-based across consumer, business, mobile, fixed, and Vodafone Cash.

While service revenue growth returned to the 20s in Q4, we are pleased to have secured another double-digit price-up in Egypt last week. This is expected to help us navigate through a period of higher energy prices and promote industry sustainability.

Shifting further south to Safaricom, in December, we announced the transaction to increase our shareholding in Safaricom to 55%. This would allow us to fully consolidate Safaricom.

This transaction was approved by parliament and all necessary regulatory bodies, but is subject to a status quo order issued by the High Court of Kenya. We expect an update on this ruling on the 18th of May 2026.

Pending this outcome, we will be able to finalize the deal very quickly. Ahead of that, and as an associate, Safaricom contributed 4.6 billion rand to operating profit, increasing 38.3%.

Safaricom's result was supported by an excellent performance in Kenya, with EBITDA margins of 56.7%, up 2.7 percentage points, and lower losses in Ethiopia. In Kenya, Safaricom was awarded 25-year operating and spectrum license renewal, providing long-term regulatory certainty for the business.

Our four markets that make up the international business increased operating profit 67.2% to 4.9 billion rand. This result reflected double-digit service revenue growth in Tanzania, DRC, and Lesotho.

The operating leverage of these assets was also evident in the year, with EBITDA margins recovering to 34.6% from 29.3% in the prior year. We continue to work on pricing frameworks across our markets.

We see scope for more of our markets to introduce price floors, which will support a healthier telecom sector with the appropriate levels of investment. Finally, to South Africa, which remains the largest component of operating profit at 20.5 billion rand.

The business demonstrated resilience despite the challenging macroeconomic environment and increased competitive noise. Growth was supported by the contract segment and beyond mobile.

Pressure on prepaid moderated in the fourth quarter, and we're expecting a better performance into FY '27. Pleasingly, EBITDA grew 1.8% in the second half as we kept margins broadly flat.

This reflected our cost containment efforts. From a strategy perspective, we were pleased to close the South African fiber deal with Maziv in December 2025.

With our injection of cash and assets, Maziv will re-accelerate its fiber rollout, adding another double-digit growth lever to the group. At a group level, the strong growth across three of our segments delivered a net profit to equity shareholders of 20.6 billion rand, with headline earnings per share of 1,053 cents, up 22.9%.

Shifting from performance to purpose, which is at the heart of Vodacom, our video presentation sets out the progress we are making on our three purpose pillars of empowering people, protecting the planet, and maintaining trust. We have well-established hero projects and new initiatives that drive each of these pillars.

Before we move to Q&A, I will make some comments on our medium-term targets. When we complete the Safaricom deal, we will combine Vodacom's existing growth engines and free cash flow generation potential with that of Safaricom.

This will position the group to accelerate growth and deliver attractive returns with a portfolio of market-leading assets across Africa. As a result, we intend to provide an update on our Vision 2030 targets once the transaction closes.

Ahead of then, our group service revenue and EBITDA targets with double-digit growth is unchanged. This year, we have also added a new target, which is operating free cash flow, to enhance shareholder visibility for management's long-term incentives related to these metrics.

Finally, we narrowed the group capital expenditure target to 13.5 to 14.5. This is to provide a more accurate steer of our medium-term capex ambitions, as we continue to benefit from sharing partnerships and new low-cost funding models, including grants.

That concludes my review. Raisibe and I are now ready to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Shameel, and good afternoon to everyone. This is JP.

We're going to kick off with Safaricom as the first topic of the Q&A. There are two questions for Safaricom, one coming from Tando at UBS and the other from Jonno at Absa.

Tando at UBS is just asking for an update or any color on how and when the acquisition may be closed, citing that there are some articles in the Kenyan press pointing to delays towards August. Then Jonno is picking up some news flow in Kenya related to their budgeting cycle, which may drive higher taxes on things like mobile devices and banking fees, wondering how we, as Safaricom's controlling shareholder, would look to mitigate these type of headwinds going forward.

I guess I would take the opportunity to just talk more broadly about the regulatory environment in Kenya. Shameel, are you okay to kick off with those?

Sure. I think firstly from a deal closure perspective, all the regulatory approvals have been given in in Kenya in terms of parliament and and the different regional and local regulatory bodies.

All the approvals have been have been given. The the deal is subject to a preservation order or stay order at the moment, where there's a court case challenging the challenging the transaction.

The judge is about is to rule on the on the conservatory order, as it's called, by the by the 18th of May. If it's lifted, it will give us a chance to complete the transaction.

That's the one part. If it's not lifted, it will be the court case so the court case will continue anyway.

The the court case could be a few months after after the could be a few months later if the court so decides. We we are a little bit in the court's hands, but we think the case is quite strong and there isn't a reason to to to delay, we'll we'll see how it we'll see what the court decides.

Then in terms of the overall regulatory environment, I think very positive that Safaricom's managed to to basically obtain a 25-year operating and spectrum licenses and so on, and all the licenses and spectrum have been renewed for 25 years. That provides certainty to the business, and so that's a very, very positive development in the in the in the Kenyan environment.

Secondly, so so very pleased with pleased with that. I think on a in terms of the budget increases, this is what I would call business as usual.

We we deal with these things every year in different countries. Governments increase the taxes, it's something that we we have to navigate.

What we try and do is try and make sure, that we can we can balance the impacts of that on on consumers. We we we try and negotiate with governments to talk about, putting not putting price increases in the wrong places, like smartphone penetration.

I think one of the challenges on smartphones going into this next cycle is going to be memory costs, we will be engaging governments to say please remove duties to to to assist as because otherwise, it will slow down the number of smartphones that, uptake in in a particular year. This will be a global trend and it will affect all all operators alike.

Robert Grundle from Deutsche Bank has a couple of questions, but I just want to theme them particularly around Egypt, and then we'll come back to a few of his others. Specifically around Egypt, trying to get a better sense of the magnitude of the impact of the price-ups that have now been approved in the market.

I think alongside that, perhaps we can just follow on while we're on the theme of Egypt with a question from Tando from UBS, asking specifically about those new low-entry plans in Egypt. Is it fair to assume, in his words, that that could create pressure on ARPU?

Then finally, around Egypt, we are growing faster than peers in the market. How are we doing that?

Can we do that through this next round of price hikes? Yeah.

Price increases in Egypt will be between 9% and 15%, and that will be executed across the entire industry. That's the one part.

The low-entry plan, which is about a £5 plan, will also be executed across the industry. I think it's done smartly to balance the, on the one side, the need to cater for rising energy costs and so on with the price increase with making sure that the poorest of the poor are not affected through a low-entry plan.

No, we don't think that it will affect the growth of the market and in the opportunity. I think one of the things why we're doing well in Egypt and why we continue to perform, firstly, I think the market structure is very good.

Secondly, I think our execution capability from a brand perspective, from a distribution perspective, from a fintech perspective is very, very strong. Our content as well, loyalty, all the different elements plus our personalization, AI-generated offers, all of these type of things are extremely strong, which gives us a very good platform to continue to build on.

As you can see, the growth is not in one area, it's across the business. I think execution capability and so on will remain strong going into the year, and of course, we always try and run faster than competition.

There's areas where competition will try and copy and so on, and then we need to be a couple of steps ahead. I think the team's proven over the last couple of years that they're capable of doing that.

Staying with Egypt, Maddy from HSBC had a couple of questions. The first one is maybe for Raisibe.

Can we just talk to what is seen as slightly softer margins in the second half of the year in Egypt to provide a little bit of color there? Then, Shameel, there's the questions coming through in different ways, but it's really around will revenue growth re-accelerate given the pricing decision in the market?

Perhaps a little bit of color around expectations for growth into FY '27 for Egypt.

So—hi, everyone—the margin softening was largely to do with the war impacts given the changes in currencies or the FX. We've seen some weakness coming through the EGP in line with what has happened in other emerging markets, and the FX loss from the working capital side is what has impacted our EBITDA margin.

In addition to that, we have continued to invest, particularly to support our financial services business. More taking a long-term view, and that softening is nothing to be too concerned about.

Otherwise, we see a sustainable margin base for the rest of the year, which the margin was roughly about 45% for a better part of the year, and that is what we see as sustainable.

Okay. In terms of growth rates for FY '27, we think that the business will grow mid-20s for the next year whilst being able to maintain margins.

In the longer term, we think that the CAGR is around about in the early 20s. That's where we are in that context.

What's driving it also will be we will continue two things. One is the spectrum investment that we've made is helping us to unlock growth and to reduce the blocking quite considerably, so that's been really, really good from a customer experience perspective, but also as we move customers to 5G, we're seeing much better growth.

Also adding more capacity through the 1800 spectrum that we've acquired is also helping us to monetize a bit better. The capex intensity is expected to be over 15% capex to sales, as we're seeing that when we put the money in, we're able to monetize and get a very quick return.

We're going to shift to the international business segment, and a couple of questions there from Nadim. Firstly around Mozambique growth, what are our expectations for FY '27 after lapping some of the pricing initiatives?

Just related to that, Nadim is a slightly broader question, just thoughts around international remittance as a key opportunity for the M-Pesa services of beyond core. Then just staying with the international markets, maybe this one is for you, Raisibe.

What is causing that service revenue slowdown that we're seeing in DRC in the final quarter of the year?

Okay. On Mozambique, I think having gone through a lot of the pricing changes and pricing growth, for the year we had 3.3% growth in service revenue, and it's about a 6 billion rand a year business now.

What we see happening is that the growth will accelerate absent the price floor to kind of higher single-digit growth. With the price changes that we're talking about and so on that is not yet been finalized, it can get back into double-digit growth.

That is still ongoing in terms of conversations with government and finding the right way to be able to execute it. They have concluded their cost studies and regulatory approvals and so on.

In Mozambique and DRC, there were proper cost studies done by the regulator and the need for pricing regulation or price floors have been identified to ensure the continued investment cycle. It's just now how to manage it and when and so on, that becomes important.

In terms of M-Pesa, the growth rates are very sustainable. We have had very good growth across the portfolio, specifically in the international segment.

It's grown quite strongly at almost in the 20s, very strong growth all round. Customer growth is very strong as well, I think we're quite pleased with the performance in that segment.

Yeah. Basically what we're doing now is making sure that we can roll out all the models across all the markets.

Kenya and Tanzania are ahead of the rest of the market in terms of use cases, we're trying to grow the number of use cases and making sure that we have all the products launched in all different markets. Give an example, what we're doing is taking the insurance success that we have in South Africa and then creating an insurance COE for the rest of our markets.

We're doing the same for the international money transfer out of Kenya into the different markets. We're leveraging that capability and capacity through our different markets to try and accelerate revenue.

Another example is we've launched wealth management in Kenya and specifically something called Ziidi stock trader, which now already accounts for 47% of the trades on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. This is how quickly these things accelerate, and of course we'll learn from that and then take those learnings and then implement that into various markets.

Remember, only 103 million customers are using fintech services, still a big opportunity to grow faster across the group.

Maybe just to also add in terms of the remittance opportunity, here we see it not just as a use case for growing our M-Pesa offering, but also in terms of securing FX. Given that our remittances is more inbound, it strengthens our relationship with the banks that we give inflows, and we have found in different markets opportunities where it allows us access to that FX for purposes of our needs.

That comes quite handy in markets which are particularly low on liquidity, such as Mozambique. It is really quite a strategic asset, apart from just the normal additional product that is offered through M-Pesa and all the conveniences that comes with it.

The question about the service revenue slowdown in DRC, so as you may be aware, the eastern part of DRC in Kivu, the war flares up from time to time. It goes quiet and then it goes noisy, and the service revenue was impacted largely by that, and inclement weather when it's a rainy season, the logistics are very difficult in DRC.

Combination of those factors, but we have seen a bit of a pickup now, particularly from a war perspective. We have seen a bit of a pickup, we see that as a temporary damp, but the outlook for growth in service revenue as well as EBITDA in DRC remains fairly strong at double-digit in dollars.

We're going to move to South Africa, and unsurprisingly prepaid remains a hot topic amongst the analysts, investors on the call. Let's pick up on Jonathan and Nadim's questions to cover off some of the bigger picture on SA prepaid.

Shameel, can you provide a little bit of color on the outlook for SA prepaid revenue and whether we could see a return to revenue growth before the second half of '27? Then related to that, Nadim just asking around the competitive intensity and promotional intensity in the market.

How has that evolved in prepaid year-to-date?

Okay. I think on the prepaid outlook, very pleased that the repricing and some of the initiatives that we took in Q3 that abated in Q4, we started to see the elasticity coming through, and that basically will flow into the coming year as well.

I think maybe just a little bit of context. Remember in South Africa, where you'll see a difference between, I'd say, Vodacom and MTN and the other operators, is Vodacom and MTN still have more voice revenue than the other operators.

Voice is in structural decline because the move to voice over IP or things like WhatsApp voice and so on. During the period, that has come down to 29% of prepaid revenue, and if we look at it in terms of overall service revenue, then it's now 12% of overall service revenue.

It's not gone and there will still be declines, and the biggest thing in prepaid is trying to manage that decline because your traffic growth remains very strong. Data traffic growth was 32%, your traffic growth in South Africa at the back of the level of investment is very strong.

You also had some data repricing, and that's starting to stabilize, we think that in Q1, we'd be back in positive territory for prepaid in the South African market. What's also encouraging, if you look at the smartphone penetration, it's up 10.6% to 35.7 million customers, and 4G and 5G devices are also up 15% to 28 million.

These underlying trends that are very strong, that will help to convert faster data revenue and be able to grow the revenue better. The big thing, of course, is managing the voice decline on the one side, and then secondly the monetization of the data growth.

I think you've seen more that elasticity come through in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter.

Just a specific question from Prashendran around our voice revenue trend, just to confirm the exact decline, noting it was about down 13, down 14 in the third quarter.

Yeah. It was minus 13 basically on voice decline for the year.

Then in the fourth quarter, we improved a little bit to down 11.6.

11.6.

11.6, yeah. Down 11.6.

We saw an acceleration in data revenue growth monetization in Q4 to 5.5%.

There are a few questions on fixed service revenue for South Africa. The first one is what is driving the sequential slowdown in growth from high single digits towards 6% in 4Q?

Perhaps I can quickly take that one. Then a bigger picture question on the traction we're seeing since we've finalized the CIVH or Maziv deal, that's from Rohit of Citi, and are we already offering services on CIVH's footprint?

Just on fixed, quite right, has slowed down quarter-on-quarter. If you look back to the fourth quarter in financial year '25, it was a very strong period, and we had a good deal in there related to one of our corporate customers, and that created a bit of a tougher comp into this particular quarter.

No change in the underlying trends for SA fiber. Still think that that contributes nicely to the beyond mobile story for the SA business going forward.

Shameel, do you want to take the bigger picture question on Maziv?

Sure. I think on Maziv, firstly from a revenue perspective, 7.6 billion of revenue, 5.2 billion of EBITDA, and you can see that the margins are very, very healthy in that context.

That's the positive. This is before Herotel, and Herotel has gotten CompCom approval in the final throws of the regulatory approval as well.

Then they'll be able to consolidate that and then gives them an extra leg, I would say, to further expand fiber penetration. I think from a synergy perspective, they can definitely benefit from some of the let's call it our procurement benefits, especially with the bigger suppliers and so on to make sure that they can take part of some of the opportunities that can prevail.

Of course, they are looking at those comparatives and so on. Then from a sales perspective, of course the ISP part, that's separate to Maziv, and that really means that we need to run faster, and we are seeing a lot more traction on prepaid fiber as we now reselling that full swing, and we're seeing every year gains in our ISP penetration on the one side, and also fixed wireless performance.

Raisibe, a question from Tando on the South African EBITDA margins. He's noted they're down around 30 basis points in the second half of the year.

Can you give us a little bit of for them the the audience a little bit of feedback on some of the key drivers of the margin into the second half of the year, and maybe some of the key pushes and pulls of this margin into FY '27?

Sure. We saw a better traction from a revenue perspective, particularly prepaid, as has been explained by Shameel earlier.

Big focus on that to a point that we closed with a almost neutral position, and that was helpful from driving the revenue. In terms of costs, SA has always run a very tight cost program, which will continue with, and that is really what is giving support to margin.

The outlook is to still grow EBITDA in the mid kind of single-digit type number, and that is how we see the contribution coming both from the revenue as well as from the cost program. Aware that our beyond mobile comes at a lower margin, but nevertheless fairly strong business, but we believe that it is a good contribution in terms of continue to drive the growth in the top line.

Our margin outlook is actually better in the new year, FY '26, given that the 2025 '26 was also carrying the one-off that we picked up in the first half.

Staying in South Africa, Rohit had a question on the financial services revenue growth trend for South Africa, picking up perhaps that there was a decline quarter-on-quarter. Maybe that's one we can touch base with after the call, Rohit.

We did see a little bit of an acceleration in financial services, the full year we did 8% and then in the final quarter touching on double-digit. He had a related question, are you seeing any impact on Airtime Advance?

In our case, Airtime Advance quite consistent with the prepaid trend more broadly, not seeing any great shakes on Airtime Advance at this point. Anything to add to that, Shameel?

No, I think Airtime Advance is more mature product now for us, and what we're doing is now leveraging that data and capability across other products to do other forms of lending and so on. In the year, the strong financial service growth has actually come more from the insurance part, which is accelerated and it's given us some nice teens growth, and that's contributed to the strong financial service performance during the year.

On to regulation in South Africa, Jonno from Absa wanted a bit of color on our thoughts regarding the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill, which appears to have a pro-MVNO slant. Just maybe how or what we would do in terms of next steps, how do we respond to these proposed amendments, and our thoughts on whether it could destabilize the industry.

I think, firstly, the bill hasn't been properly consulted on, I think it will end up being consulted on more in the next phase, and then we'll put forward our comments and so on. There's talk about licensing MVNOs, and that's positive and negative for the MVNOs, I would say, because if they operating in a license regime, then they need to also deal with all the social obligations and license fees and all kinds of things that would happen.

It doesn't change the context of them selling products. Today, they don't need to be licensed.

Tomorrow, they would need to be licensed. I don't think it changes because remember in South Africa, it's easy to become an MVNO, right?

In a licensed environment, you'd have to apply for a license first.

We are now going to shift to some group questions. Robert Grundle from Deutsche Bank, noting that while we've nailed six out of eight markets from an NPS leadership perspective, there are two that we haven't.

Which markets are those? For reference, that's South Africa and Kenya.

What are the plans to address our NPS leadership in those markets, Shameel?

Yeah. I think in South Africa neck-and-neck, and so is Kenya.

I think to be honest, when you're the biggest three in both markets, the people are more critical. That doesn't mean we don't.

What we do is we unpack every measure, and we look at how can we close the gap, and the teams have very clear goals. Just to give an example, in South Africa, we ended the year neck-and-neck, basically equal to a joint number one, if you like.

Then in Kenya, we closed the gap quite significantly during the year as well. There's very clear, focused direction, team effort from the group right into each of the markets of initiatives, looking at what the customer part is, deep detractor focus.

What are your deep detractors? What are the reasons for detraction?

How can you fix it, and so on. Then of course, on churn as well.

Then people are incentivized accordingly. All of management across all the markets are basically incentivized on NPS, churn, deep detraction, and so on.

Raisibe, maybe this one is for you. Maddy from HSBC picking up on the new guidance related to operating free cash flow.

He's asking can dividends be linked to operating free cash flow going forward, or will remain linked to EPS? Then just while we're on that theme of operating free cash flow as a growth target, Robert Grundle from Deutsche Bank wondering if we could provide any color on the capex and lease growth or profile for capex and leases going forward within the mix.

Clear on what EBITDA growth is going to be, but any color on capex and leases would be appreciated. Okay.

The operating free cash flow measure introduced to create more alignment with the long incentive scheme, where operating free cash flow is one of the key metrics, and also as has been requested by some of the shareholders. In our responsiveness, we just thought let's just add it on the list of the targets that you provide on a medium-term basis.

It is not meant or planned to change our metric relating to dividend, dividend will still be based on earnings, which is 75% of the earnings. Okay?

Staying with you, Raisibe, a couple of questions, quite a few questions on our exposure to energy across the footprint. The exposure relative to opex, perhaps we've got something like service revenue to hand.

We can just provide a little bit of color on our exposure to diesel into FY '27.

Okay. I think we still need to finish off the other question on the operating free cash flow relating to capex.

We also moderated our guidance for capex, moving from 13 to 14.5 to now 13.5 to 14.5, and that is in recognition that the group has somewhat changed in terms of the mix, and whereas SA is more closer to 13, the other components, i.e., Egypt and IB, are more on the top end. The guidance is really narrowed in that context.

The introduction of operating cash flow does not change the construct in terms of how we thinking about capex and capex intensity. Yeah.

I think that is just to give a bit more color in one of the other metrics. In terms of the diesel, the direction in how impactful this diesel prices is to us, firstly from a overall group perspective, the energy compound makes about 4% or is equivalent to 4% of our service revenue and 22.5% of our opex, noting that opex is roughly about 25% on the cost components.

The other pieces are in A&R and direct cost. So 4% of service revenue, which then gives you a good sense of it is not a very material number in the bigger scheme.

Right at the beginning of the noise relating to oil prices increasing, we started looking at different options in different markets. The easiest thing to do was bulk buying, we did bulk buying in markets such that we have supply of two or three months, and really quite frankly, the bulk buying, the only limitation is storage, and obviously you know that diesel has expiry date.

Two, continue to strengthen our relationships with the oil majors to make sure that we don't run out of supply. In some of our markets, the telco industry is formally recognized as a strategic industry, where if there's a shortfall or rationing, we are less likely to be disadvantaged, which we welcome in those different markets.

In markets where we do not have that obvious categorization like in SA, where it is first to be pronounced, like we've seen during COVID, that you need to first pronounce the fact that it is a crisis period, and therefore the definition of those markets which are categorized as strategic. That said, our relationships with the oil majors is still such that we are quite comfortable that we have secured some supplies.

We also looked at hedges, in SA we managed to close the hedge before the last price increase, which there was an increase in April and there was an increase in May, and before the second increase, we were able to close a hedge where 100% supply for the next six months is fully hedged. We're quite pleased to the pricing at which we've been able to do the hedge.

We are working with our teams in the other OpCos as well as obviously the local banks, but supported by the banks from SA side to look at hedging opportunities in those markets. We believe that the additional costs that one would pick up outside of what we have bought in bulks and outside of the price increases that we know today, for the large part we can be able to pick that up in our normal cost savings programs, where some of the increases we can be able to offset in other lines.

Far so good, but it is a risk that we are monitoring very, very closely.

Super. Just to confirm, Raisibe mentioned there 4% of service revenue at a group for energy costs, and diesel will make up a fraction of that.

The vast majority of our energy is on grid. In most of our markets, actually outside of South Africa, a lot of that is renewable power now, including hydro power.

Shameel, maybe a bigger picture question for you around mobile money and a potential IPO. Maddy, noting the strong performance of Airtel Africa over the last call it year, rerating substantially on its IPO prospects.

Where are we, and how are we thinking about this position for Vodacom?

I think we've got a much better business. Looking at the numbers, we're three times the size of Airtel, $2.3 billion now across the group once we're able to consolidate Safaricom.

Just Vodacom once markets on its own is about the same size as Airtel and you add Safaricom on top, then that becomes a very big number. That's the one side.

Actually, Vodacom is actually bigger than the Airtel numbers just on its own. That's the first part.

I think, do we want to list it separately, all of that? No, we're watching the movie.

Instead, we're hoping that you give us credit for it. We're watching the movie to see what happens with the Airtel listing on the one side, and on the other side, we'd like to see the market acknowledge more that fintech is a major contributor and will become a bigger contributor to the Vodacom story and the Safaricom story.

We continue to give color and so on, and accelerate the growth, and watch what actually happens and what the implications are for Airtel of listing it separately before we make any calls in that context. For us it's core business, we want to make sure that we continue to double down and accelerate on the business and continue with the good growth that we're seeing.

Raisibe, back to you for a follow-up question on Safaricom and a question around the funding of the acquisition from Jonathan at Prescient. He's asking has anything changed with our funding plans for the Safaricom transaction, and is the expectation still that the Vodafone loan will be refinanced via accessing bank or debt markets directly?

Then any color we can give at this point in time around the cost of that funding or the cost outlook for the funding?

What has changed is actually a positive development in that when we spoke back a few months ago, we said we will take the term debt and a bridging facility and then replace the bridging facility with preference shares. We have done enough preparation in terms of getting the preference shares, such that there is a strong probability of implementing the preference shares immediately, given that with the transaction delays, it gave us a bit more time to discuss with the banks.

Our plan is that roughly about 9 billion will be done with the prefs, and then from the remaining 36 billion, 27 will still be the facilities with Luxembourg and still with the possibility of being able to refinance. Quite well aware that we have just closed preference share program with the banks where they kindly supported us for the Maziv transaction, 8 billion, we're about to do 9 billion.

For that reason, kind of giving it a little bit of a planning period is what we think will be more palatable. Indeed, as we have demonstrated through various transactions that we've done, that we have really laser-focused on converting any expensive debt, expensive in the form of not being tax-deductible, to best available funding program, which at this stage prefs have proven to be.

We have repaid some of the expensive debt, my point being of that 27 billion, whenever opportunities to pay off those facilities come up, we will choose repaying or refinancing. That is a part of the program that we'll get into.

In terms of funding, we believe the Luxembourg loans are very well priced somewhere in the region of between 7% and 8%, which is pretty much well comparable to our basket of funding that we have right now. Even if it hasn't been in the period before refinancing, we believe that it will be relatively kind to our balance sheet.

Shameel, a question from Jonty at Allan Gray, wanted a few more thoughts or a bit of feedback on Tanzania, in particular the customer revenue growth we're seeing in the markets and the direction of market share in Tanzania. Then at the moment, a final and fun question from John Davies at Bloomberg Intelligence, asking around any prospects of a non-test launch of satellite direct-to-device in the current financial year, and if this is on the cards, which countries do we think are closest to getting that service?

Okay.

On Tanzania, flying is the short answer. 21.8% service revenue growth, customer growth double-digit, M-Pesa growing in the 20s.

Really just an all-round fantastic performance backed by strong commercial execution on the one side, but also you've got price regulation in that market, so that's also very important. Then also the M-Pesa part, where we do better than competitors.

I think that also stands out for us. We also made a big strategic move that I think is standing us in good stead, which was to swap out the entire network to a new vendor, which has given us a lot of capacity and so on with the latest modernized equipment that consumes less power and so on.

That's been really good. Half of that was completed last year, and half of that will be completed this coming financial year.

We're hoping to see that benefit continue into this year as well. Also a lot of focus on margin improvement as well, we're also seeing margins expand in that market.

Tanzania, DRC have become two very good markets for us.

Then the question on the satellites and direct-to-cell? Yeah.

On satellites, the way I would think about it is really there's three opportunities around satellite. The one is backhauling, and that's what I put in the no-brainer category, which essentially is the ability to backhaul rural sites at a lower cost, than what we currently have from traditional players.

That's that we'll take every day of the week, and and that what's what we will use some of the Starlink parts Starlink agreement for as well. Then as the other operators launch, it gives you more more, let's say, more options in in that in that respect.

Secondly, you looking at is direct-to-dish or broadband connectivity. There you have Starlink today, of course it's not licensed in South Africa, but we're busy with the rollout into different markets.

That's really where there isn't fiber or there isn't fixed wireless opportunity, I'd say. That's where you have the biggest level of potential traction, not that you won't have some uptake in cities, but the bigger opportunity, I would say, is is there.

What we've seen from from the providers like Starlink is they start with unlimited, then quickly realize that unlimited consumes capacity, then becomes a a, where you're buying 200 gigs or 300 gigs, that type of thing. That changes changes it compared to fiber.

That's why I say fiber will always probably be be better where good fiber is available. That said, if you have a lodge in the middle of nowhere, that will be very beneficial.

Then direct-to-mobile, we have we have basically the fore leader in that space is AST, and we have an agreement with them to to launch. We have done some tests, but we want to do a much more detailed test with them.

That is planned, but also there will be other options, and we will provide different services from different providers to be able to cater for that. We see the bigger opportunity for direct-to-mobile in countries that are uncovered and/or large portions are uncovered.

We think in our context that's Ethiopia and the DRC, where we think satellite will be a big part of the play. In the other markets, satellite will be part of the mix and provide us be able to give us the ability to provide coverage everywhere.

Generally, I think you'd use you'd use mobile. Also, because also the cost of that is what we're working on to make sure that it's available for everyone and not just for a few.

Super. Shameel, that brings us to the end of the Q&A, happy for you to wrap up the call there.

Thank you. If you're joining us on the roadshows, we'll see you then, but if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to JP and the IR team.

Thank you. Thanks for joining us.