MTN Nigeria has seen its subscriber numbers grow by 0.1 million to 61.6 million. MTN’s revenue for the period is N856.4 billion as against N764.4 billion reported during the same period last year. This is indicative of a 12% increase.
Interestingly, the telco’s direct network operating costs for the period decreased by 21.7% to N177.9 billion, although the cost for employees’ benefits and advertising cost increased by 20.9% and 10.6%, respectively.
Further, figures released by the company shows that earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 39.3% to 460.1 billion Naira. On the other hand, capital expenditure rose by 39.5% to N154.1 billion.
Profit before tax also grew by 23.9% to N212 billion during the period under review as against N171 billion during the comparable period last year.
Profit for the period stood at N148.3 billion, a 28.9% increase compared to N115 billion reported by the company for the first three quarters of 2018.
Chief Executive Officer, Ferdi Moolman, commented on the financial performance saying that it is indicative of the company’s “resilience” despite “a challenging operating environment”. The company generated most of its revenue for the period through its voice and data services.
“We were required to undertake a SIM re-registration process, which resulted in a disconnection of around 0.6 million active subscribers; limiting base growth,” the company disclosed in its financial statement released on Thursday.
MTN anticipates further increase in voice, data revenue, says CEO Nevertheless, CEO Ferdi Moolman affirmed the company’s resilience in sustaining double-digit growth in a challenging environment.
“Our performance was very encouraging, demonstrating the resilience of our business despite a challenging operating environment. We sustained double-digit growth in service revenue led by growth in voice and data revenue,” he said.
Additionally, MTN stated that voice remained a key contributor to service revenue at 73.5%. This was as compared to 74.8% in the third quarter of 2018, supported by “relatively stable tariffs” among other things. Furthermore, data added 18.0% to operating revenue, up from 15% in the third quarter of the year.
MTN disclosed that the remaining quarter of the year would be focused on expanding the 4G network coverage. Also, the focus will go into increasing active data subscriber growth.
Meanwhile, the company anticipates that voice and data revenue will continue to grow on the back of subscriber growth and increasing demand for data services.
