WED. 01 FEB, 2023-theGBJournal| MTN Nigeria (MTNN) Tuesday reported that it added 7.2 million more mobile subscribers in 2022 to its network, swelling its total by 10.5% to 75.6 million, and ‘’representing a good recovery from the impact of an increase in churn in Q3 2022 and demonstrating the effectiveness of our churn management initiatives and interventions to ramp up gross connections’’ says Karl Toriola, MTN Nigeria CEO.
The mobile telecoms giant also added 5.2 million active data users in 2022 to bring the total of active data users to 39.5 million, a 15.3% increase. Toriola said the company benefitted from its efforts to drive data conversion in new and existing subscribers.
‘’We accelerated the coverage and capacity of our 4G network in response to the rising data traffic, bringing 4G population coverage to 79.1% (up by 8.7pp). 4G traffic now constitutes 79.5% (up by 9.7pp) of the total traffic on our network,’’ he added.
Against the backdrop of the growth is the rising profile of its active fintech subscribers. The company reported in the period under review that that base has increased by 57.5% to 14.9 million with 2 million active mobile money (MoMo) wallets since the launch of PSB. All of these have helped to drive the company’s service revenue up by 21.5% to N2 trillion.
Meanwhile, MTNN reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) growth of 22.0% to N1.1 trillion and EBITDA margin increase of 0.2 percentage points (pp) to 53.2%.
Profit before tax (PBT) grew by 22.3% to N534.0 billion while Profit for the year grew by 21.1% to N361.5 billion (excluding non-controlling interest).
During the period, Earnings per share (EPS) rose by 21.3% to N17.79 kobo as Capital expenditure (Capex) rose by 23.5% to N504.3 billion (up 18.6% to N361.0 billion, excluding the right-of-use assets).
‘’Our ability to maintain service revenue growth while unlocking efficiencies through disciplined execution of our expense efficiency programme led to a 22.0% growth in EBITDA and a 0.2pp expansion in EBITDA margin to 53.2%, in line with our medium-term target range,’’ the CEO explained in his comment on the company’s performance.
The company proposed final dividend of N10 per share in line with its dividend policy to be 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%.
The CEO said they are exploring a scrip dividend option as an alternative form of shareholder return to a cash dividend, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals.
He says they anticipate that once regulatory approvals have been received, there will be further shareholder communication ahead of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) planned for 18 April 2023.
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