MTN Group, this week, hosted a Ghanaian investor at its Fairland head office to exchange ideas and discuss its Ambition 2025 strategy: Leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress.
MTN Ghana, which is part of the West and Central Africa (WECA) region, is a significant operating company within the MTN Group portfolio of 18 opcos. It is a particularly important Mobile Money (MoMo) market, where the Group has offered MoMo services since 2009.
MTN Group President and Chief Executive Officer, Ralph Mupita, MTN Group Chief Financial Officer, Tsholofelo Molefe and MTN Group Executive for Investor Relations, Thato Motlanthe, met with Databank Asset Management Services Head of Research, Alex Boahen, and Associate Director, Nii Ampa-Sowa.
One of the Group’s four strategic priorities is to ‘create shared value’ and regularly engaging with its key stakeholders is essential for the company to deliver on this priority.
Resilient performance in the first half of 2022
MTN Group reported a resilient performance in the first half of 2022, balancing an accelerated investment into its networks, reducing the cost to communicate and the delivery of solid financial results.
The Group advanced the delivery of its strategy under challenging conditions, which included macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, global supply chain disruptions, constrained on-grid power supply in South Africa and greater regulatory requirements across many markets.
“Notwithstanding the tough macro conditions, MTN remained focused on investing in our markets to increase broadband coverage and to reduce the cost to communicate. We accelerated network investment to R17.1 billion and spent an additional R7 billion on securing 4G and 5G spectrum in the key markets of South Africa and Nigeria”.
MTN Group President and CEO, Ralph Mupita
The investment in networks increased access to broadband services to 85.5% of the population and led to an average 22.5% reduction in data tariffs. The Group’s contribution to society and economies also included cash taxes of R7.3 billion paid to nation states in the period.
In driving investment that grows gross capital formation, the contribution “we made to jobs and the fiscal resources of nation states was underlined by good financial results in the first six months of 2022”, the Group highlighted in a statement.
In constant-currency terms, service revenue grew by 14.8% to R92.5 billion; earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 15.1% to R43.9 billion before once-off items; and the EBITDA margin expanded by 0.3 percentage points to 45.3%. This was supported by the focused execution of our expense efficiency programme.
As part of its Ambition 2025, the company disclosed that it is building five scale platform businesses on top of a very strong connectivity network. The fintech platform is the most mature of these, and in the first half, it had 60.7 million Mobile Money users (up 24% year-on-year), generating six billion transactions worth US$116.3 billion. The total number of MTN subscribers in the period was 281.6 million, up 5.6%.
Launched in 1994, the MTN Group is a leading emerging market operator with a clear vision to lead the delivery of a bold, new digital world to its customers. The Group is inspired by its belief that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life. The MTN Group is listed on the JSE Securities Exchange in South Africa under the share code ‘MTN’. Its strategy is Ambition 2025: Leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress.
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