Pan-African telecommunications leader MTN Group Ltd. released its H1 2026 financial results, with MTN Nigeria generating R35.33 billion in service revenue—accounting for 30.6% of total group service revenue and leading all operating units.
Revenue from Nigeria was up 25.7% in constant currency. MTN Ghana revenue rose by 32.3% in constant currency to R22.12 billion, contributing 19.2% in service revenue, while MTN South Africa service revenues rose by 1.5% in constant currency to R21.93 billion, and contributed 19% to service revenue.
Nigeria also led in terms of Group data revenues recording R20.23 billion Rand, up 38.2% in constant currency, Ghana data revenues came in at R12.996 billion, up 47.3% in constant currency and South Africa R10.9 billion, up 4 percent in constant currency terms.
Service revenue from Nigeria grew 25.7% year-on-year in constant currency (CC), driven by surging data demand and subscriber expansion.
Group-wide service revenue expanded 17.5% CC (9.7% reported) to R115.3 billion, underpinned by strong operational momentum in West Africa. This supported a 24.4% CC increase in pre-once-off EBITDA to R56.0 billion, widening the group EBITDA margin by 3.1 percentage points CC to 47.6%.
In response to robust free cash flow generation and balance sheet strength, MTN announced the launch of an R6 billion (~31 million shares) share buyback program under its Ambition 2030 capital allocation framework.
Data and Fintech Expansion
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Data Dominance: Group active data users grew 9.1% to 179.3 million, lifting overall network traffic by 22.8% to 14.3 petabytes. Nigeria led data revenue generation across the group at R20.23 billion (+38.2% CC), followed by Ghana (R13.00 billion, +47.3% CC) and South Africa (R10.90 billion, +4.0% CC).
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Fintech Scaling: Monthly active Mobile Money (MoMo) users reached 70.8 million (+12.1%), processing 13.0 billion transactions (+17.2%) with total transaction value rising 33.8% CC to $330.5 billion.
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Strategic Execution: MTN reaffirmed progress on its planned $6.2 billion acquisition of IHS Holdings, including regulatory compliance steps to execute a 30% local equity sell-down of IHS Nigeria. The transaction is expected to close in H2 2026.
MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita said:
“MTN delivered a strong consolidated first-half performance in 2026, with growth in our subscriber base accelerating in Q2 2026. We combined double-digit service revenue growth with pleasing EBITDA margins, robust FCF generation and a resilient balance sheet. This performance reflects disciplined execution, the quality of our diversified portfolio and sustained investment in our networks, platforms and customer experience.
Importantly, we advanced a number of strategic initiatives, including the fintech separations and the IHS transaction, while launching Ambition 2030 to guide the next phase of MTN’s growth and value creation.”
