Airtel Africa on Friday reported a 78% jump in net profit to $96 million for the second quarter ended on 30 September 2019, driven by growth in customer base.
The company had recorded a net profit of $54 million in the same period a year ago.
The Africa unit, which crossed the 100 million customer mark in July, said its revenue growth of 10 per cent in reported currency was driven by double-digit growth in Nigeria and East Africa, partially offset by a slight decrease in Rest of Africa.
In constant currency terms, revenue grew 11.4% in H1 and 12.6% in Q2. This was the 7th consecutive quarter of double-digit constant currency growth. The constant currency revenue growth of 11.4% was driven by double-digit growth in Nigeria and East Africa, partially offset by a slight decrease in Rest of Africa. Growth was broad-based across all services, with revenue in Voice, Data and Mobile Money up by 3.2%, 37.8% and 46.5% respectively
“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 per cent in constant currency terms, with even higher underlying EBITDA growth as we continued to improve our operating leverage and tight focus on costs,” said Raghunath Mandava, Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Africa.
The average revenue per user almost remained flat at $2.8 in the second quarter. However, it grew by 2.4 percent on a constant currency basis.
The total customer base of Airtel Africa grew by 10.4 percent to 103.9 million from 94.1 million during the period under review. Data users on the company’s network grew by 17.7 percent to 31.9 million in July-September 2019 from 27.1 million a year ago.
“This performance underlines our ability to consistently grow in double digits, powered by our growth engines of data and Airtel Money growing at 37 percent and 46 percent respectively. This is the 7th quarter of double-digit growth with EBITDA margin expansion of over 90 basis points,” Mandava said.
The net debt on the company almost halved to $3,191 million at the end of 30 September 2019, from $6,439 million a year ago.
“The reduction in net debt is a result of bond repayments of $2.2 billion and an increase in cash from the net IPO proceeds of $670 million. As a result, leverage reduced to 2.3 times as of September 2019 as compared to 5.1 times as of September 2018 basis last twelve month EBITDA,” the company said.
Airtel Africa’s data revenue was up 39 per cent at $229 million on-year and was the largest contributor to growth owing to an increasing number of customers taking to high-speed LTE services, resulting in a 57 per cent growth in data usage. Data average revenue per user rose to 2.5$ up 20 per cent in constant currency terms for the September ended the quarter, on-year.
Voice revenue in constant currency grew by 3.3 per cent to $491 million largely driven by customer growth driven by stable churn and expansion of distribution infrastructure. Voice Apru however declined by 6 per cent on-year to $1.6 in the quarter due to weakness in Rest of Africa and decrease in interconnect rates across key markets, especially in East Africa which more than offset ARPU growth in Nigeria.
