Billionaire Johann Rupert's fibre business now reaches 2.9 million South African homes

Johann Rupert's fibre business now reaches 2.9 million homes in South Africa, and its revenue rose 15% to 7.7 billion rand, about $473 million, according to results his investment company Remgro published on Friday.

Maziv owns Vumatel and Herotel, which run fibre networks into homes, and Dark Fibre Africa, which supplies the high-capacity links connecting those networks to the rest of the internet. Its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 14% to 5.3 billion rand, about $326 million, and headline earnings jumped to 856 million rand from 22 million a year earlier.

Remgro owns 57% of Community Investment Ventures Holdings, Maziv's parent. CIVH contributed 319 million rand to Remgro's headline earnings, against a loss of 93 million the year before.

The figures cover the twelve months to March 31, because CIVH and Maziv report to that date rather than to Remgro's June year-end. They are the first to include Vodacom as a shareholder.

Vodacom completed its purchase of 30% of Maziv on Dec. 1, paying about 12.6 billion rand, roughly $775 million, in cash and fibre assets, after the Competition Tribunal blocked the deal in 2024 and an appeal court cleared it in August 2025. The network Vodacom contributed was included for only four months of the period, adding 100 million rand of revenue and 78 million rand of EBITDA.

Vumatel, the country's largest residential fibre operator, grew revenue 15.3% to 4.43 billion rand and lifted operating profit 57% to 2.16 billion, TechCentral reported. Remgro attributed most of the revenue growth to the Vodacom network and new subscribers, but has not disclosed how much of the profit increase came from each.

Dark Fibre Africa grew revenue 8.9% to 3 billion rand and operating profit 10.1% to 1.24 billion.

Maziv bought the 49.93% of Herotel, a small-town operator, that Vumatel did not already own from CIVH in June, paying in new Maziv shares valued at no less than 2.75 billion rand. Vodacom put in more than 800 million rand of cash to keep its holding at 30%. Herotel covers more than 620,000 homes across about 550 towns, and adding it lifted Maziv's reach from 2.3 million homes to about 2.9 million, according to Vodacom chief executive Shameel Joosub. That gives Maziv roughly 40% of the South African homes fibre networks reach.

Herotel signed a deal in July to sell Amazon Leo's low-orbit satellite broadband under the name Evry from 2027, aimed at farms, game reserves and rural areas fibre will not reach. Remgro said the partnership widens its market beyond fibre and fixed wireless.

Remgro took 3.05 billion rand in dividends paid out before the two transactions closed, 2.66 billion around the Vodacom deal and 394 million around Herotel. It raised its own ordinary dividend 73% this year and paid a special dividend of 550 cents a share.

Fibre is expensive to build, and CIVH carries the debt to show it. Remgro's previous results showed its borrowings above 20 billion rand, with finance costs of 2.6 billion.

Remgro valued its CIVH stake at about 16.2 billion rand, around $1 billion, at the end of December.

Rupert, 76, controls Remgro through the family's unlisted B shares, which carry 43% of its votes.