MTN Nigeria has released its financial results for the year ended December 2018, with significant increase in data revenue and fintech revenue and a decrease in digital revenue.
The telco’s earnings before taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) also grew by 30.8 percent to N453.1 billion excluding all payments made to the Central Bank of Nigeria.
A N453.1 billion EBITDA shows a marginal increase of 43.6 percent (excl CBN payment).
According to the results, there was a 17.2 percent increase in service revenue in 2018, just as data revenue increased by 39.3 percent and fintech revenue grew by 32.7 percent. The telco also added 6 million subscribers to its network, increasing its subscriber base to 58 million and remains the dominant player in Nigeria’s telecom market.
However, MTN Nigeria suffered a huge decrease in digital revenues which dropped 58.1 percent.
“In 2018 we rebuilt the base; adding another 6 million Nigerians to our network, giving a total of 58 million people access to worldwide communication services,” said Ferdi Moolman, CEO, MTN Nigeria.
“This growth was built on our sustained focus on customer-centric delivery – ensuring that customers get much more value for their money. This included the deployment of proactive interventions to improve customer experience, together with the enhancement of network quality and coverage, and the optimisation of our services portfolio,” Moolman said.
On its plans to list by introduction in 2019, MTN has given assurance that there will be no shifting in its listing.
“MTN plans to list by introduction on The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) during the first half of 2019 and is looking to simplify the capital structure ahead of this listing. The Company’s listing on the Exchange will create a new telecoms asset class for investors and provide an opportunity for a wider group of Nigerians to participate in our investment story,” the telco said in a statement sent to BusinessDay.
Moolman said MTN also enabled an additional 8 million people to access the possibilities that the internet provides, bringing its total data subscriber base to 44 million, of which 18.7 million use more than five megabytes per month.
“We are now even better positioned to ensure that everyone can access the benefits of a modern connected life. We are excited to have been given the privilege to continue playing a role in facilitating this, and are grateful to our customers, our people, our partners and our regulator for making this possible,” Moolman said.
“We understand how access to the opportunities enabled by the internet can open up new industries even in the remotest areas of our country. Thus, we will continue to focus on delivering social innovations like mobile electricity, financial services for all; and leveraging our technology as a vehicle to enable high-impact mobile solutions in education, health and agriculture in our communities – urban and rural,” he said.
The business sustained its growth trajectory, building on the positive momentum from the previous years to achieve an annual service revenue growth that exceeds inflation (from 11.2 percent annual service revenue growth in 2017 to 17.2 percent in 2018), the first time in the last three years of recovery. This is complemented by effective cost containment, with reduction in the annual growth of expenses from 27 percent in 2017 to 8.8 percent in 2018 excluding one-off costs linked to the CBN dispute.
