MTN Nigeria has reported a blowout-win in its full-year results, and has rewarded shareholders with bumped-up dividends.
The telco today released results for the year ended December, showing a surge in profit and massive growth of its fintech business.
Nigeria is the top profit-making market for MTN Group, generating the lion's share of the telco's revenue.
In the year, MTN Nigeria profit before tax grew by 22.3% to N5 34 billion, and for shareholders, the proposed final dividend is N10 per share.
MTN’s mobile subscribers increased by 10.5% to 75.6 million, adding 7.2 million subscribers in the year, while active data users increased by 15.3% to 39.5 million – and addition of 5.2 million active users.
In financial services, active fintech subscribers rose by 57.5% to 14.9 million and the telco now has two million active mobile money wallets since the launch of its Payment Services Bank (PSB).
MTN Group was granted final approval for the PSB licence in Nigeria last year to commence operations.
The bank offers a wider range of mobile financial services beyond the traditional person-to-person mobile money transfers, such as lending and bill payments.
MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola says: “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.”
“We continued to manage and invest in the resilience of our business and networks, expanding coverage and capacity with a focus on expense efficiencies and disciplined capital allocation,” notes Toriola.
“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.”
In other key metrics for the year, MTN Nigeria’s service revenue increased by 21.5% to N2 trillion, and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 22% to N1.1 trillion.
Earnings per share rose by 21.3% to N17.79 kobo, while capital expenditure increased by 23.5% to N504.3 billion (up 18.6% to N361 billion, excluding the right-of-use assets).
Toriola comments: “Our strong commercial momentum, supported by an accelerated investment in our network, enabled growth across all revenue lines. As a result, we recorded a 21.5% increase in service revenue, above the average inflation rate and in line with our medium-term growth guidance.
“Our ability to maintain service revenue growth while unlocking efficiencies through disciplined execution of our expense efficiency programme led to a 22% growth in EBITDA and a 0.2pp expansion in EBITDA margin to 53.2%, in line with our medium-term target range.
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