MTN Nigeria Reports 4.2m Increase in Mobile Subscribers in Q1 2020

• MTN Nigeria Reports 4.2m Increase in Mobile Subscribers in Q1 2020

MTN Nigeria Communications Plc (MTN Nigeria) reported a 4.2 million increase in mobile subscribers in the first quarter (Q1) of this year.

In the unaudited financial statements released by the telecommunications giant, active data users rose by 1.7 million to 26.8 million in the period under review while service revenue increased by 16.7 percent to N328.5 billion.

The company grew earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) by 15.3 percent to N173.5 billion in the quarter. EBITDA margin moderated by 0.6 percentage points to 52.7 percent.

Accordingly, profit before tax rose by 8.9 percent to N76.3 billion.

Commenting on the results for the quarter, Ferdi Moolman, the Chief Executive Officer, MTN Nigeria, said: “We recorded a solid performance in the first quarter, building on the growth momentum we achieved in Q4 2019. Service revenue was strong and rose by 16.7 per cent driven by voice and data revenue as 4.2 million subscribers were added to the network, driving voice revenue growth of 7.4 per cent.

“Data revenue increased by 59.2 per cent, supported by growth in data traffic with a further 1.7 million active subscribers connecting to the internet during the quarter. We continued to deepen data penetration with the further rollout of 46 sites, increasing population coverage to 48 per cent in Q1 2020 from 44 per cent as of year-end 2019.”

Moolman said the strong growth was as a result of 63.7 percent strong growth recorded in digital revenue and 36.1 percent from fintech revenue.

“Our mobile money agent network has grown to 178,000, adding 70,000 agents during the quarter,” he added.

The MTN boss noted that the strong performance was achieved despite the increase in Value Added Tax from 5 percent to 7.5 percent in February and several other backdrops that impacted revenue.

“The situation has been exacerbated by upheavals in the global oil market, which put significant downward pressure on all prices leading to an exchange rate adjustment by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on 20 March 2020, thereby increasing some of our costs,” he said.