South Africa’s Telkom posts 25% jump in half-year earnings

South Africa’s Telkom TKGJ.J reported a 25.4% rise in half-year earnings on Tuesday, boosted by its mobile business, which benefited from increased demand from people working from home and online schooling.

The partly state-owned landline and mobile operator said headline earnings per share, the main profit measure in South Africa, rose to 2.19 rand ($0.1421) in the six months ended Sept. 30 from 1.74 rand in the comparable period last year.

The telecoms sector has been one of the biggest winners of a nationwide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus with telcos seeing a spike in data traffic as millions were forced to work, school and entertain themselves from home.

Telkom’s consumer-focused division, which includes its mobile business, grew strongly with mobile service revenue up by 47.8% to 8.2 billion rand, it said in a statement.

Its mobile data revenue, which accounts for over two-thirds of the mobile business, was up by 53.8%, the third biggest mobile operator in the country said.

However, migration to work from home negatively impacted the enterprise fixed-line business and information technology division, pushing its revenues down marginally by 0.4% for the half year to 21.4 billion rand. Nasdaq