MTN Nigeria Communications Plc (MTN Nigeria) has announced its unaudited results for the half-year ended 30 June 2022.
Salient points:
● Mobile subscribers increased by 7.6% to 74.1 million
o Added 5.7 million subscribers in H1 2022
● Active data users increased by 13.2% to 36.8 million
o Added 2.5 million active users in H1 2022
● Active fintech subscribers rose by 87.3% to 11.5 million
o 4.2 million registered (2.4 million active) MoMo wallets since launch of PSB on 19 May 2022
● Service revenue increased by 19.9% to N947.9 billion
● Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 22.1% to N509.3 billion
● EBITDA margin increased by 0.9 percentage points (pp) to 53.6%
● Profit before tax (PBT) grew by 24.9% to N268.6 billion
● Profit after tax (PAT) grew by 28.1% to N181.6 billion
● Earnings per share (EPS) rose by 28.1% to N8.92 kobo
● Capital expenditure (Capex) rose by 67.1% to N311.6 billion (up 78.6% to N204.5 billion, excluding right of use assets)
● Interim dividend of N5.60 kobo per share, up by 23.1%
During the first half of 2022, we made good progress in strengthening the resilience of the business in the face of our increasingly challenging operating environment
with rising energy, food and general inflation putting pressure on consumer spending. The conflict in Ukraine as well as implementation of a “zero-COVID” policy
in China, has also put a strain on global supply chains. To mitigate global supply chain and exchange rate risks, we accelerated capital expenditure for network expansion
into the H1 2022.We deployed capex of N311.6 billion to accelerate the rollout of our 4G network, which now covers 75.3% (compared to 65.1% in H1 2021) of the population and accounts for 77.9% of data traffic (compared to 67.2% in H1 2021). In addition, having acquired one lot of 100MHz in the 3.5GHz spectrum band from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), we are on track to launch 5G services across the country in Q3 2022. 5G technologies deliver significantly higher speeds and lower latency, potentially unlocking many new use cases for consumers and enterprises while improving network economics.
Since the directive from the NCC for all operators to restrict outgoing calls for subscribers whose SIMs are not associated with NINs, approximately 10 million of
those affected have submitted their NIN, of which about 2.6 million have been reactivated following verification by National Identity Management Commission
(NIMC). We continue to engage our affected customers and support NIMC in accelerating NIN enrolment in the country.We maintained strong commercial momentum with a net addition of 5.7 million mobile subscribers in H1. This reflects a pleasing acceleration in the run-rate of monthly net additions during Q2, following the initial impact of the restriction of outgoing calls placed on subscribers who had not submitted their National Identity Number (NIN) as at 4 April 2022. Our aggressive drive for gross connections supported this recovery as we ramped up SIM registration and NIN enrolment capacity.
We added 2.5 million active data subscribers in H1 as we continued to drive data conversion from the new and existing subscriber base. In addition, we continue to
enhance the quality and coverage of our network to accommodate the increasing demand for data.We achieved some important strategic milestones in H1 towards delivering our Ambition 2025 strategy. This includes the final approval for our MoMo Payment
Karl Toriola, CEO, MTN Nigeria
Service Bank (PSB) and the commencement of commercial operations on 19 May 2022, leveraging the solid foundation of our existing MoMo business. We are pleased with the progress since the launch and excited about the prospects of our fintech business and driving financial inclusion in the country. As at the end of June 2022, we recorded 4.2 million registered MoMo wallets of which 2.4 million are active, generating MoMo transaction volume of approximately 7 million within six weeks of operations.
