Telkom South Africa and rival Rain walked away from initial discussions on a potential combination of the two businesses, with the former stating a suitable transaction was not currently possible.

In a stock market statement, Telkom highlighted the deal for a potential acquisition of Rain in exchange for newly-issued shares had been terminated. Due diligence had not been undertaken.

“Telkom continues to execute its strategy to unlock value for shareholders and will provide an update on progress in this regard in due course.”

The pair opened discussions in September 2022, which reportedly put a spanner in the works of talks between MTN Group and Telkom on a deal of their own.

In October 2022, Telkom announced MTN had terminated talks on a deal with it as it “was not in a position to provide MTN with assurances around exclusivity”.

GSMA Intelligence connection figures for Q4 2022 place Telkom as the third-largest of five players in its home market with 18.5 million while Rain was the smallest with around 540,000.

The research company’s figures placed Vodacom Group and MTN as the largest operators in South Africa on 45.4 million connections and 36.6 million, respectively.