Today’s Financial Times reports about what will probably be the ultimate digital virtual currency, and it ain’t bitcoin. It is a mobile-phone text-based payments system invented in sub-Saharan Africa called M-Pesa. This is a way to pay for goods and services using funds from your cellphone account. M-Pesa means mobile money in Swahili, the lingua franca of Kenya, from which the system has spread.
Today Vodafone Group plc, a major UK-based cell-phone operating company, number 2 worldwide by subscribers and revenues (after China Mobile) began to offer M-Pesa in Europe, starting with Romania where VOD has 8.3 mn subscribers. Only a third of them have bank accounts. Romanians currently pay everything with cash.
A mobile phone text message is all that you need to pay bills and shop using M-Pesa. All the seller needs is another mobile phone. You can also deposit cash or withdraw it from licensed agents (ATMs are few and far between in Romania and other emerging markets.
Vodafone licensed and launched M-Pesa in 2007 on its Safaricom network in Kenya. Since then it has been spread to Egypt and India, as well as non-Kenya sub-Sahara African countries like Lesotho and Mozambique. Of course the system pays off for the telco, which gets transaction revenues plus the float. And it also makes its customers less likely to switch telcos as competition for basic cheap calling services increases.
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More for paid subscribers starting with a 2013 reports from two companies plus news from China, Mexico, Spain, and Colombia. We have bad news from Britain, Canada, and Ireland; good from Israel and Canada; and ambiguous news from China, Israel, Brazil and more.
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*Guangshen Railway reported audited results for 2013 under International Financial Reporting Standards. GSH revenues rose 4.7% to RMB 15.8 bn on passenger volumes up 7.5% offsetting declining freight haulage revenues down 4.97% because of slowing domestic growth in China. Freight transport nonetheless rose 19.28% during the year because GSH consolidated some branch lines and handline stations, and upped the cost per tonne of freight haulage by 1.5 RMB cents.
Consolidated profits rose to RMB 1.274 bn, or 18 RMB cents down 3.4% from 2012 levels. EPS came to 18 Chinese cents, down from 19 in 2012.
For 2014 GSH forecast growth in both freight and passenger levels during “a new period of development” as long as the PRC “maintains stable growth” and permits “marketization reform” of the railroads and opens up the railways to compete not only against highways, canals and air transport, but also against each other.
A dividend of 8 RMB cents was declared for 2013 down not only from 2012, but suffering from the recent decline in the RMB against the dollar. I have not had time to calculate this. Read on for why.
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*Your editor got a 535-page incomplete report in English on 2013 and Q4 from Delek Group of Israel, a conglomerate, DGRLY. Finding the bottom line was looking for a needle in a haystack. I can see why the Israeli authorities want to require fewer layers of control for listed companies in future under its “concentration law.” High time.
