The MTN Group released the company’s first-quarter 2022 trading update on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) on Friday and reported a solid financial and operational performance.
The mobile operator which has 276 million customers in 19 markets says its service revenue grew by 15.9%, the Group’s EBITDA margin improved to 46.4% (from 44.2%), and active Mobile Money (MoMo) customers increased by 25.9% to 58.7 million.
“This performance was supported by service revenue growth at our large operations, which was delivered in line with medium-term targets, and the disciplined execution of our expense efficiency programme,” Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita said.
“In the quarter, the Group grew subscriber numbers by 3.2% YoY to 276.2 million, which was impacted by new SIM registration regulations in Nigeria. Excluding this impact, subscribers increased by 3.9%,” he said.
“MTN Nigeria, however, added 1.7 million subscribers during Q1, demonstrating good momentum on the 1 million in net additions reported for Q4 2021. MTN Nigeria is assisting with providing IT hardware resources to support the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) with accelerating National Identity Number (NIN) validations,” Mupita said.
Mupita says MTN’s fintech subsidiary in Nigeria received final approval of a MoMo Payment Service Bank (PSB) licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in April 2022. He says that this will enable them to invest in the launch and rollout of PSB and offer a broader range of services in line with the CBN’s guidelines.
MTN says that it is “…committed to supporting the government of Nigeria to fulfil its agenda of driving financial and digital inclusion. We plan to commercially launch PBS services before the end of Q2 2022.”
“We remain focused on executing our Ambition 2025 strategy to drive growth, continue implementing our expense efficiency programme, deleverage the Holdco balance sheet faster and unlock value for our stakeholders,” Mupita concluded.
Edited by Zintle Nkohla
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