MTN South Africa increased its subscriber numbers by 2% in the third quarter of the year, while the Nigerian market declined.
The telco's quarterly update shows overall subscriber growth of 0.9% quarter-on-quarter for the group, while registered Mobile Money subscribers grew almost 13% to 36.5 million across 14 operations.
"The group's third quarter results reflect continued progress made in the South African operation strengthening its market position and significant improvements in network quality following corrective measures taken in MTN Nigeria," according to MTN Group president and CEO, Sifiso Dabengwa.
MTN South Africa's subscriber base now stands at 29.1 million, after prepaid subscriber numbers grew by 3.1%. The postpaid subscriber base, however, was not as healthy, with numbers declining by 2.6% to 5.2 million. This was blamed on the "disconnections of approximately 90 000 low-cost router SIMs recorded on the Autopage subscriber base and low availability of handsets".
"While supply chain issues have been largely resolved, the operation continued to experience limited availability of handsets during the quarter as a result of delayed deliveries," according to MTN.
Dabengwa says Mobile Money and digital content revenue continued to gain healthy traction for the telco and continued to increase their contribution to revenue.
"However, aggressive price competition, weakening macro-economic conditions in most of our markets, and unfavourable exchange rate movements continued to impact financial performance for the quarter," adds Dabengwa.
Global operations
MTN Nigeria struggled in the third quarter, showing a 0.5% decline in subscribers to 62.5 million. MTN says this was mainly as a result of the disconnection of 5.1 million subscribers at the end of August 2015 in line with industry-wide regulatory registration requirements. The group says 3.4 million of these subscribers have already been reconnected.
"While management continues to engage with the regulator, performance continues to be impacted by ongoing regulatory restrictions [in Nigeria]."
Billable minutes of use increased almost 13% year-on-year in Nigeria, while the South African operations saw billable minutes grow by over 41%.
MTN Irancell's subscriber base grew by 3% to 45.5 million, while the Ghana operation saw its subscriber base surpassing 15 million at the end of the quarter, a 4.1% improvement on the second quarter.
MTN Cameroon saw a 4% drop in subscribers to 9.9 million due to the "disconnection of low-cost routing subscribers and a revised subscriber registration process". MTN says the Cameroon operation continues to experience aggressive price competition, which resulted in the effective rate per minute declining 15.5% year-on-year.
MTN Ivory Coast also recorded a marginal decline in its subscriber base to 8.5 million, while the Sudan business saw subscribers fall 5% for the quarter to 8.3 million. MTN Uganda increased its subscriber base by 3.4% to 11.5 million, while MTN Syria improved its subscriber base by 0.5% to 5.7 million.
The company operates in 22 countries across Africa and the Middle East, and now has just over 233 million total subscribers, a 0.9% increase on the second quarter numbers. It also saw voice traffic for the group grow by almost 19%, while data traffic soared 120% year-on-year. Constant currency data revenue increased by 27% year-on-year and now contributes 23% to total revenue.
Data draw
Data revenue in the South African operation increased 40% and now contributes 31.5% to total revenue. This was driven by "attractive segmented data bundles and an increased uptake of digital services".
"The group continued to invest in its 3G network, catering for increased demand for data services. During the quarter, we added 3 800 3G sites and 1 357 LTE sites. This, together with increased 3G device penetration, resulted in more than 100% year-on-year increase in data traffic across our operations," says Dabengwa.
In Nigeria, data revenue was also on the rise, recording an almost 17% increase and contributing 21.3% to total revenue.
"Data revenue growth was impacted by a steep decline in data tariffs as a result of aggressive competition. The effective data tariff declined almost 60% year-on-year."
Improving data speeds through aggressive 3G rollout in main cities remains a priority for MTN in Africa's biggest economy, and the company says digital revenue continues to gain traction in Nigeria, now contributing over 10% to total revenue.
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