MTN Nigeria announced its unaudited results for the nine months’ period ended 30 September 2021, showing that revenues surged by 23.6 percent to N1.2 trillion, led by data and Fintech.
Active MTN data users increased by 2.5 million to 33.2 million, while mobile subscribers declined by 7.5 million to 67.5 million, impacted by the regulatory restrictions on new SIM sales and activations.
Data revenues rose by 51.5 percent to N366 billion, while Fintech revenues increased by 55.2 percent to N50.2 billion for the period.
“In the first nine months of 2021, we continued to enhance the resilience of the business, improve our performance and make good progress towards our Ambition 2025 strategy. Creating shared value has become a strategic priority within the Ambition 2025 framework. As a result, we continue to deepen our support for and partnerships in Nigeria,” MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola said.
“In view of our intention to participate in restoring and refurbishing the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway under the Road Infrastructure Tax Credit (RITC) scheme, we continue to engage with the relevant parties to actualise the project. The resilience we are building in the business is reflected in our performance, demonstrating our ability to achieve continued growth despite the ongoing impact of SIM registration and activation restrictions on subscriber growth. While our overall subscriber numbers have continued to decline over the last quarter, this has been at a reduced rate, and we have seen our data subscriber numbers return to growth, increasing by 2.5 million. We expect the decline in the overall subscriber base to bottom out and return to positive net additions in Q4 2021 as we progressively ramp up our SIM registration and activation infrastructure while adopting and aligning with the new regulations.”
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 27.4 percent to N634.5 billion and EBITDA margin improved by 1.6 percentage points (pp) to 52.6 percent.
Capital expenditure was up by 34.4% to N261.1 billion (up 27.9% to N166.5 billion excluding the right of use [RoU] assets), and earnings per share rose by 52.7 percent to N10.8 kobo.
Data revenue maintained an accelerated growth trajectory in Q3 as MTN continued to drive increased data conversions from the existing base, aggressively expanding 4G coverage and enhancing the capacity of its network to support increasing data traffic.
Average MB per user rose by 58.2% YoY, enabling overall data traffic growth of 85.5% YoY. Also, smartphone penetration on the network grew by 3.5pp to 48.7%. MTN’s 4G network now covers 69.2% of the population, up from 60.1% in December 2020.
Fintech revenue grew by 55.2% as customers continued to increase their use of MTN’s Xtratime product and broader fintech services.
MTN Nigeria expanded its mobile money (MoMo) agent network with the addition of over 234k registered agents in the nine months bringing the total number to approximately 630k.
As a result, transaction volume in the nine months rose by more than three times to 93.3 million, led by an active subscriber base of 6.6 million, up 97.2% YoY.
While MTN awaits the outcome of its PSB licence application, it continues to expand its MoMo operations and explore other verticals to scale its fintech ecosystem.
Digital adoption also continued to accelerate in the quarter as customers use more digital products and services, a trend accelerated by COVID-19.
As a result, digital revenue grew by 56.0% as the active user base grew and penetration of digital products deepened. The active user base rose by 295.6% to 5.8 million, led by Ayoba – MTN’s instant messaging platform – with approximately 2.9 million active users.