MTN Group Revenue Rises to N4.9 Trillion, Subscribers Hit 289 Million in 2022

MTN Group has reported a strong 2022 financial performance, including a 15.3% increase in service revenue to N4.9 Trillion (R194 billion) and maintained a stable margin on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of 44%.

In the financial statement sighted by Business Remarks, in the year to 31 December 2022, the group’s total subscribers rose 6% to 289 million, with data subscribers growing by more than 12% to 137 million and Mobile Money users up by 21% to 69 million.

EBITDA increased by 14.3% to N2.3 Trillion (R90 billion). It was supported by our expense efficiency programme which yielded N69 billion (R2.7 billion) in savings, mostly in Nigeria and South Africa.

“The structurally higher demand for data and fintech services was sustained, with data traffic and fintech transaction volumes increasing by around a third each,” said MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita.

Mupita noted that the network investment expanded access to broadband services to almost 88% of the population (from 83% in 2021) in our markets as we focused on rural rollout, extending digital inclusion across Africa.

“To support this, we invested more than R38 billion in our network, IT and platform infrastructure – an increase of 17%, while at the same time reducing consumers’ average cost to communicate by nearly 23%.

“To drive industry-leading connectivity operations, we increased voice, data and fintech revenue, rolled out more than 5 000km of fibre and invested in subsea cables.

“Alongside the increase in capital investment, our proactive commercial, expense efficiency, supply chain, network and financial resilience interventions helped alleviate the impact on results of a tough operating environment. This included – across markets – high inflation and interest rates, weak local currencies, pressure on disposable income and in South Africa, the significant impact of severe loadshedding.

“Across our markets, we continued to execute on our four strategic priorities. To build the largest and most valuable platforms, we expanded our fintech ecosystem and made progress in separating our fintech business from our GSM business, receiving offers for strategic minority investments into the MTN Group fintech structure. We anticipate completing the process to review offers and engage investors in May 2023” he said.

MTN group strong financial performance also included an expansion in return on equity to 23.4% and a 10% increase in the dividend to 330 cents per share, in a challenging macroeconomic environment of elevated inflation across its 19 markets.