Top South African clothing retailer taking on Capitec in the telecoms market

Mr Price has steadily been building a telecoms giant, with the apparel retailer now selling devices and running a successful mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

Mr Price’s growth in this segment comes as the MVNO market in South Africa is booming, with Capitec’s successful Connect business leading the pack, and device sales are becoming an attractive segment.

The retailer’s success in this arena comes after over a decade of building out its telecoms offering.

In its 2014 financial year, Mr Price was already experiencing strong growth in airtime sales, prompting the group to start reporting these sales separately. 

That year, the group’s airtime sales surged by 41.7%, making it one of Mr Price’s fastest-growing segments, with total airtime and related mobile revenue reaching R120 million.

In June 2015, Mr Price launched its MVNO, mrpMobile, which offered post-paid contracts, smartphones, and tablets to creditworthy store card customers. Initially, Mr Price had a 55% ownership stake.

mrpMobile proved highly successful, already reaching a critical mass of subscriber numbers and swinging to profit in Mr Price’s 2016 financial year.

In 2018, Mr Price decided to go all in, acquiring the remaining 45% of what was now called MRP Mobile, making it a 100%-owned subsidiary.

That same year, the company started its strategic rollout of “Hello MRP” cellular kiosks in more than 100 stores.

These kiosks would prove to be a critical foundation of MRP Mobile’s success, with a physical presence sending the offering to new heights.

By the 2019 financial year, the cellular kiosks had aggressively expanded to 216 stores, driving an almost 400% increase in their revenue and helping Mr Price’s overall cellular and mobile income reach R677 million.

Then, a shift came in 2020, when Mr Price’s MVNO division decided to shift away from post-paid contracts to focus heavily on sims-only products.

These products yielded higher margins, and with the aid of kiosks in 262 stores at this point, took the segment to a new level.

From strength to strength

Up until then, Mr Price’s telecoms offerings were part of its Financial Services segment, with revenue treated as ‘other income’. However, this changed in 2021.

The division’s strong, sustained growth over the past decade led Mr Price to spin out its telecoms offering into a standalone reporting segment in 2021.

This allowed investors to see the segment’s impressive figures in isolation for the first time, and it was impressive.

By 2021, the Telecoms segment was generating R881 million in retail sales and other income, with an operating profit of R49 million. A year later, it exceeded R1 billion in revenue for the first time.

At that point, Mr Price’s cellular merchandise was available in 374 locations. By 2023, this had reached 465 in-store locations, and the group sold over 800,000 cellular handsets and accessories.

2023 proved to be a milestone year for the Telecoms segment, as Mr Price rolled out its first 12 highly lucrative stand-alone Mr Price Cellular stores.

As with the in-store kiosks, this shift to a more physical presence proved to be a boon for the segment, igniting an aggressive rollout over the next few years.

In 2024 alone, Mr Price added 30 new locations, bringing its overall footprint to 804 combo and stand-alone stores. In that year, the segment generated R1.2 billion in sales and R133 million in operating profit.

In 2025, another major launch happened – Salt, the group’s private label device. This allowed the Telecoms segment to achieve a huge 69% accessories attachment rate and expanded its gross profit margin to an impressive 20%.

Mr Price’s latest results showed that the growth has not stopped, with the Telecoms segment now a steady powerhouse in the group’s stable, standing in contrast to its more volatile apparel segment.

In the 2026 financial year, Mr Price’s telecoms segment delivered double-digit revenue growth of 10.3% to reach R1.5 billion in retail sales.

It now operates out of 86 stand-alone stores and 482 store-in-store concepts.

Mr Price’s impressive work in the telecoms market was also awarded over the past year, with MTN crowning Mr Price Cellular as ‘Retailer of the Year’.

The table below shows the strong financial and physical growth of Mr Price’s Telecoms segment over the past decade.