Telkom CEO Serame Taukobong

In the end, Telkom hasn’t had to sell a chunk of its most prized asset, Openserve, which comprises the group’s fibre network. This was the plan under previous CEO Sipho Maseko, who had begun the process to separate its five businesses – Telkom Consumer, Openserve (which is now legally and structurally separate), towers unit Swiftnet, property portfolio Gyro and ICT group BCX – into standalone entities under a group holding structure. It has run BCX separately since it acquired the business a decade ago.

This plan envisaged the listing of Swiftnet and the introduction of strategic equity partners into Openserve and BCX, all with the intention of unlocking the value trapped within the group. Maseko’s argument from as far back as 2019 was that the group was trading at a significant discount to the sum of its parts. In early 2020, he placed a value on the constituent parts of the group: R53 billion (nearly half of this was Openserve), but at that point, the market only valued Telkom at R14 billion.