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# Cell C's fastest-growing business rents its network to banks and retailers
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cell-c-fy2026-results-wholesale-network/
- Published: 2026-08-24T08:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-24T08:00:00.000Z
- Description: Wholesale revenue rose 20% in the operator's first full year as a listed company, and an independent read of the numbers says one-offs did most of the rest.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

Cell C's fastest-growing business does not sell anything to Cell C's own customers. It rents the network to banks and retailers.

The operator published audited results for the year to 31 May 2026 on 21 August, its first full year since listing on the JSE in November. Revenue rose 13.5% to R12 641 million, adjusted operating cash earnings rose 16.9% to R2 381 million, and net debt fell 64.5% to R2.0 billion, cutting the debt-to-earnings ratio to 1.56 times from 4.29.

## The wholesale business doing the work

Wholesale revenue grew 20% to R1.76 billion, and the operator now carries 5.71 million subscriber lines for the virtual operators running on its platform, up 27.3% in a year, on an estimated 80% to 85% of that market in South Africa. Data traffic from those users rose 131%, against 47% across the group. The tenants include Capitec Connect, which had more than two million subscribers of its own at Cell C's half-year, along with FNB Connect and Shoprite's Knect Mobile.

The position is less comfortable than the growth rate implies. MTN has said it wants to be South Africa's leading wholesaler of this kind and Vodacom has entered the market, and both are networks Cell C itself roams on; Standard Bank moved roughly 300 000 subscribers from Cell C to MTN in 2024\. Chief executive Jorge Mendes told TechCentral the arithmetic favours Cell C: customers moving to those operators leave each network roughly in proportion to its market share, so the fourth-largest loses least and has most appetite to win them back wholesale.

## What the headline growth is made of

TechCentral's analysis puts most of the reported increase down to two one-off effects. Prepaid revenue rose 9.7% to R5.81 billion, but Cell C reports it net of channel discounts, and those fell from 13% of gross prepaid service revenue to 7.7% once legacy airtime terms with a Blu Label subsidiary ended at the listing. Grossed up on the percentages Cell C discloses, prepaid growth was nearer 3.4%, on TechCentral's calculation. Equipment revenue jumped from R119 million to R1 billion, which is accounting, not sales: Comm Equipment Company was consolidated from 27 November and is now reported gross, accounting for R881 million of the R1.5 billion revenue increase. Service revenue, which strips equipment out, grew 6% on the same read.

Cash is still tight. Cash and equivalents fell to R133 million from R182 million, and net cash from operations fell to R1.6 billion from R1.86 billion. Chief financial officer El Kope called the working capital deficit the balance sheet's remaining problem and the group's main focus, and said what the business does with the cash it generates is pay off history.

Cell C guides revenue growth of 5% to 10% next year off a restated R13.6 billion base. With the discount normalisation done and the equipment consolidation about to annualise, FY2027 is the first year the growth has to come from the business rather than the restructuring.