MTN Nigeria Grows Mobile Subscribers by 6.1m in 2019

• MTN Nigeria Grows Mobile Subscribers by 6.1m in 2019

MTN Nigeria Communications Plc, Africa’s largest communications services provider, grew mobile subscribers by 6.1 million to 64.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2019.

In the financial results released through the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), the telecom giant grew active data users by 6.5 million to 25.2 million during the year under review. While Earning Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) rose by 45.2 percent to N629.9 billion. EBITDA margin gained 12.1 percent points to 53.9 percent.

The company’s profit before tax gained 31.1 percent to N290.1 billion with earnings per share increasing by 38.8 percent to N9.9k.

Capital expenditure during the year under review climbed by 13.1 percent to N208.3 billion.

Speaking on the company’s performance, Ferdi Moolman, the CEO, MTN Nigeria, said: “I am pleased with our performance in 2019, which demonstrates the progress we have made in the implementation of our BRIGHT strategy. Despite a challenging operating environment, we continued to deliver double-digit growth in service revenue in line with our medium-term guidance. Voice revenue growth remained health, and data revenue continued to accelerate, supporting a 12.6 percent increase in service revenue with an acceleration in growth to 14.0 percent year-on-year in Q4 2019.”

He explained that “following the completion of the SIM re-registration exercise in Q3 2019, we recorded 2.7 million net additions in Q4. In total, we added 6.1 million new subscribers to our network in 2019. Although the last quarter is usually seasonally strong, service revenue growth (14%) in Q4 outpaced the season effect.”

“It is pleasing to note that the promising results we reported at the end of Q3 2019 accelerated in the fourth quarter. Corresponding with the increase in our active data subscriber net additions by 2.9 million in Q4 2019, our 4G population coverage rose by 8.4pp to 43.8 percent, giving people in 68 additional cities access to 4G. We closed the year with 132 cities covered by 4G and became the first mobile network operator in West Africa to demonstrate the capability of 5G technology. We are excited about its potential for our customers and Nigeria’s overall national development plans.”

MTN Nigeria recommended N4.97 kobo per share.