Nigeria’s largest telecom operator MTN Nigeria, is projected by MoneyCentral to nearly triple revenue and quadruple profit after tax by 2030, according to a forward model built on management’s own medium-term guidance — a trajectory that, if realized, implies the stock could roughly double from current levels even without any re-rating of its valuation multiples.
The projections come as MTN Nigeria Communications Plc completes its recovery from the naira devaluation shock that pushed it to a ₦400.4 billion loss in 2024.
The company has since staged one of the sharpest turnarounds in African telecoms, delivering ₦5.2 trillion in revenue and ₦1.11 trillion in profit after tax for full-year 2025, before extending that momentum into 2026 with half-year revenue of ₦2.993 trillion and profit after tax of ₦707.5 billion — a 70.6% year-on-year jump, according to the company’s H1 2026 earnings release filed on the Nigerian Exchange.
The Forward Guidance Driving the Model
MTN Nigeria has told investors to expect at least 23% average annual revenue growth through 2030, alongside an EBITDA margin of at least 55% — a target the company is already exceeding, with H1 2026 EBITDA margin printing at 55.9%, up 5.3 percentage points year-on-year, against 52.7% for full-year 2025.
Management has separately signaled it now expects “mid-to-high 50s” margins over the medium term, an upgrade from its earlier 53%-55% band, according to the FY2025 NGX earnings release. That means the 55% figure used in this model is, if anything, a conservative floor.
Layering in the company’s 80% dividend payout policy — adopted in 2025 as a signal of confidence after the balance-sheet crisis — and applying current trading multiples produces a base case that reads like a compounding machine: revenue growing 2.8-fold, operating profit more than tripling, and PAT nearly rising 3.1-fold in the four years to 2030.
What the Numbers Show
Compounding revenue at 23% annually from the 2025 base of ₦5.203 trillion puts 2030 revenue at roughly ₦14.65 trillion.
Applying the 55% EBITDA margin and a depreciation-and-amortization load consistent with the company’s historical run-rate (~13.5% of revenue, backed out from the FY2025 and H1 2026 EBITDA-to-operating-profit bridge) implies operating profit of about ₦6.08 trillion — an EBIT margin expansion to 41.5% from 39.8% in FY2025.
Feeding that through a narrowing net-finance-cost drag — MTN Nigeria already sits in a net cash position of ₦116.3 billion with interest cover of 96.7 times — and a steady effective tax rate near 35%, profit after tax lands at approximately ₦3.48 trillion by 2030, a PAT margin of 23.7%, broadly consistent with the 23.6% margin already achieved in H1 2026.
At an 80% payout ratio, that profit trajectory implies a dividend per share of roughly ₦132.41 by 2030, up sharply from the ₦20 total dividend paid for FY2025 and the ₦26 interim dividend already declared for H1 2026, payable September 7, 2026.
The Valuation Case
MoneyCentral applied MTN Nigeria’s current trading multiples — a price-to-earnings ratio of 12.01x and a price-to-sales ratio of 2.90x — to 2030 estimates, which produces two independent share-price targets that converge tightly: ₦1,988 on a P/E basis and ₦2,023 on a P/S basis, blending to roughly ₦2,006 a share.
Against the current price of ₦805, that implies 149% upside, or a share-price compound annual growth rate of about 23% through 2030 — a figure that closely tracks the underlying revenue growth rate itself, since the model holds valuation multiples flat rather than assuming any re-rating.
Given that MTN Nigeria is simultaneously deleveraging, expanding margins, and restoring dividends, the case for multiple expansion — not just earnings growth — could add further upside that this base case doesn’t capture.
CLICK BELOW to read MoneyCentral’s MTN Nigeria valuation Analysis based on Management forward guidance.
MTN Nigeria 2030 Forward Model
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