MTN’s Nigeria yesterday rang in robust annual results as it increased its mobile subscribers by an impressive 10.5%.
In its results released for the year ended December 31, 2022, it said its mobile subscribers increased by 10.5% to 75.6 million, adding 7.2 million subscribers in the year, while active data users grew by 15.3% to 39.5 million, an addition of 5.2 million active users.
Nigeria is the group’s biggest and most lucrative market
MTN Nigeria reported that earnings per share increased by 21.3% to N17.79 kobo (R0.67), while capital expenditure increased by 23.5% to N504.3 billion, an 18.6% increase to N361bn, excluding the right-of-use assets.
The South African-based, but Pan Africa-focused telco, said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (Ebitda), increased by 22% year on year to N1.1 trillion.
The group proposed a final dividend is N10 per share paid out of distributable net income.
"This brings the total dividend for the year to N15.60 kobo per share, an increase of 18.9%, delivering economic value to our shareholders," it said.
MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola said: “2022 was challenging due to global macro-economic and geopolitical volatility, resulting in higher inflation, supply chain uncertainties, foreign exchange volatility and availability.
In Nigeria, inflation reached a 17-year high of 21.5% in November before moderating slightly to 21.3% in December, bringing the average for the year to 18.8% and putting pressure on consumer spending.
He said MTN continued to manage and invest in the resilience of its business and networks, expanding coverage and capacity with a focus on expense efficiencies and disciplined capital allocation.
“We became the first mobile network operator to launch a 5G network in Nigeria, providing coverage in key cities in the six geopolitical regions. Since its commercial launch in September 2022, we have rolled out 588 sites and brought the 5G network to 5G-enabled smartphones, starting with iPhone users.
"In this regard, we made good progress towards the execution of Ambition 2025, while delivering commercial and financial performance in line with our medium-term guidance," Toriola said.
Fintech revenue grew by 19.6% because airtime lending products increased by 18%, and core fintech services more than tripled.
The group said the number of fintech users grew by 57.5% to 14.9 million, and about 2 million are active on the MoMo mobile payments platform.
Digital revenue grew 64% as the adoption of our digital products continues to grow with user journey optimisation and the growth of the active base, up 37.5% to 10.3 million.
“Our rich media services, mobile advertising, and content, value-added services, continue to drive revenue growth. Our instant messaging platform, ayoba, accounted for half of our active users.”
The group said in the year on April 4, 2022, the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) directed all operators to restrict outgoing calls for subscribers whose SIMs were not associated with National Identity Numbers (NINs).
"We implemented the directive on approximately 19 million of our affected subscribers at the time. However, subscribers whose outgoing calls were restricted require their NINs to be verified before being reactivated. As a result, in Q3 (quarter three), we recorded higher churn from affected subscribers who stopped activity after the initial restriction, some of whom opted to obtain new SIMs.
"Therefore, we continued to ramp up gross connections and roll out NINs recovery offers to mitigate the impact of churn," it said.
Looking ahead, the group said its operating environment continued to experience headwinds from the ongoing global macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, putting increased financial pressure on our customers and business.
"Despite the challenges, we will continue to invest in the resilience of our business, taking advantage of opportunities embedded within our connectivity and platform businesses.
"We will continue to ramp up gross connections and implement our NIN recovery initiatives to grow the subscriber base. This will be supported by an aggressive pursuit of our rural telephony programme to expand broadband access and drive further digital inclusion," MTN Nigeria said.
By late afternoon trade MTN’s share price on the JSE was down 3.11% at R142.30.
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