Airtel Africa Reports 8.4% Increase in revenue in H1, 2019

• Airtel Africa Reports 8.4% Increase in revenue in H1, 2019

Airtel Africa, one of the leading telecom companies in Africa, on Friday announced strong results with sustained growth across voice, data and mobile money for the first half of 2019.

The telecom giant grew customer base by 10.4 percent to 104 million in the period under review.

While total revenue rose by 8.4 percent to $1.640 billion in the first half of the year. The report shows revenue grew by 9.8 percent in the second quarter.

In the financial statements released through the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), revenue from Voice rose by 3.2 percent while sales from data grew 37.8 percent.

Accordingly, Mobile Money grew by 46.5 percent during the period. Pushing Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) up by 10.9 percent to $719 million in the period under review.

Operating profit increased 8.6 percent to $395 million, up from $364 recorded in the corresponding period of 2018.

The company’s free cash flow increased by 28 percent to $237 million in the period.

Similarly, profit after tax rose 11.9 percent from $204 million to $228 million in the first half of 2019.

Speaking on the strong performance, Raghunath Mandava, Chief Executive Officer, said: “These figures underline the strength of our ability to consistently deliver growth across voice, data and mobile money. In the first 6 months of this financial year, we delivered revenue growth of 11.4% in constant currency terms, with even higher underlying EBITDA growth as we continued to improve our operating leverage and tight focus on costs. This performance underlines our ability to consistently grow in double digits, powered by our growth engines of Data and Airtel Money growing at 37% and 46% respectively. This is the 7th quarter of double-digit growth with EBITDA margin expansion of over 90 basis points.

“In July we reached an important milestone as we crossed 100 million customers across our footprint. Our strong customer growth aided by distribution expansion was a key driver behind voice revenue growth. Our investments ahead of the industry in LTE network along with our simple and intuitive customer journeys have helped grow data consumption by 81% and data revenue growth by 37.8%. Over the last 6 months we launched 4G services in Democratic Republic of Congo and Niger, and 4G sites now account for 58% of total sites. Now we are ready to launch in Tanzania, thereby making 4G services available across all our 14 countries.

“Revenue in our Mobile Money business grew 46.5% in H1 and just above 50% in Q2, as a result of compelling customer propositions and the investments in our exclusive franchise stores and Kiosks. We have also announced exciting partnerships with Mastercard, Ecobank and Finablr which we believe will help to further support our growth aspiration and drive financial inclusion. The business continues to show positive momentum and we are confident we will continue to deliver sustained growth across Voice, Data and Mobile Money, underpinning our medium-term aspirations for revenue and profitable growth.”

The board declared an interim dividend of 3 cents per share.