Vodacom will acquire a 100% stake in South African operator Neotel for ZAR 7 billion (around $398m).
The parties entered into exclusive talks for a due diligence last year.
Neotel, which began operations in 2007, is now the second largest fixed telecoms provider in South Africa, serving both the consumer and enterprise sectors. The company has access to over 15,000 km of fibre-optic cable, including 8,000 km of metro fibre in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Neotel also has access to 2 x 12 MHz of 1800 MHz spectrum, 2 x 5 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum and 2 x 28 MHz of 3.5 GHz spectrum.
Neotel will become a subsidiary of Vodacom South Africa and the combination with Vodacom’s South African fixed enterprise business will create a national service provider with annual revenues of more than R5bn.
Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub said: “Through the combination of these two businesses, the provision of a wider range of business services and much needed consumer services like fibre-to-the-business and fibre-to-the-home becomes a concrete reality – it will be good for the consumer, good for business and good for the country.”
Vodacom sees a significant opportunity to accelerate growth in unified communications products and services by integrating its extensive distribution and marketing capabilities with Neotel’s fixed network and product capabilities. The combined entity will be able to offer an expanded and enhanced range of converged services (e.g. hosted PBX, OneNet) to enterprise customers. Vodacom estimates revenue synergies with a total net present value of approximately R0.9bn after integration costs.
The combination of Neotel’s and Vodacom’s networks will improve overall network availability and reduce the cost to serve customers. The combined business will also be ideally positioned to accelerate broadband connectivity in line with the South African Government’s broadband targets, enabling Vodacom to take a leading position in the fibre to the home and fibre to the enterprise segments of the market.
The combined entity will also be able to use the radio spectrum currently assigned to Neotel more effectively. This spectrum will enable Vodacom to accelerate the roll-out of LTE services, providing high speed, high quality wireless connectivity to a greater proportion of the South African population.
Vodacom expects to achieve substantial cost and capex synergies with an annual run-rate of approximately R300m before integration costs in the full fifth year post completion, equivalent to a net present value of approximately R1.5bn after integration costs. These savings will primarily be derived from the joint utilisation of Neotel’s extensive fibre network and the elimination of overlapping elements, joint procurement and the combination of overlapping administrative functions.
Vodacom will fund the acquisition through available cash resources and existing credit facilities. The transaction remains subject to the fulfilment of a number of conditions precedent including applicable regulatory approvals and is expected to close before the end of the financial year.
