MTN Nigeria grows subscriber base to 77.749 million in Q1’2024 to retain the largest market.
MTN Nigeria’s subscriber base grew by 1.3% to 77.749 million in the first quarter ending March 2024 from 76.751 million reported in the corresponding period of 2023 to retain the largest market outside South Africa.
This was contained in the MTN Group’s Q1 2024 unaudited financial statement.
South Africa’s subscriber base rose to 37.094 million in Q1 2024 from 35.924 million recorded in 2023, representing an increase of 3.25%.
MTN Group, the largest telecommunications operator in Africa reported a notable decline in its first-quarter service revenue, registering a decrease of 18.8%.
This downturn was primarily influenced by the performance of MTN Nigeria (MTNN), a significant subsidiary within the MTN Group.
Headquartered in South Africa, MTN operates across 18 markets in Africa and boasts a substantial subscriber base of 288 million.
The group service revenue for the first quarter ending on March 31, 2024, dropped to 42.9 billion rand ($2.34 billion) compared to 52.8 billion rand in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.
In constant currency, service revenue, which excludes device and SIM card revenue, rose by 11.1%.
Its service revenue from South Africa surpassed that of Nigeria, its biggest market by revenue, growing marginally by 3% to 10.4 billion rand, while Nigeria dropped by 52.8% to 10.2 billion rand.
The Group President and CEO, Ralph Mupita commenting on the result said that the macro environment in the first quarter of 2024 remained challenging with ongoing high inflation as well as local currency devaluations in some of our key markets.
Mupita noted that although still elevated, we are encouraged by the abating trend in the blended rate of inflation across our footprint, which reduced to 13.7% in Q1 2024; compared to 18.5% in Q1 2023 and 15.4% in Q4 2023.
“In Nigeria, we saw strong underlying commercial momentum in the business, despite the financial impacts of the sharp devaluation of the naira and continued elevated inflation during the period.
“Global geopolitical tensions remained elevated and a factor impacting our performance. This included the ongoing civil war in Sudan, which severely affected network availability and revenue generation in our business in that market.
We were also impacted by cable cuts that resulted in downtime for significant subsea cables connecting the African continent, particularly in West Africa,” he said.
Mupita said that the group’s subscribers increased by 3.0 million to 287.6 million adding that base growth was hampered by subscriber registration regulations in Ghana and Nigeria, as well as a decline in subscribers in Sudan amidst the ongoing conflict.
He said that active data subscribers were up by 7.8% (to 149.2 million), supporting increased traffic and data revenue growth.
Mupita said MTN Nigeria is focused on maintaining its commercial momentum, accelerating service revenue growth, unlocking operational efficiencies, and strengthening the balance sheet to improve the profitability of the business
He said MTN Nigeria’s EGM was convened on 30 April 2024 in order to articulate the management team’s plans to address the negative net asset position as reported in the audited financial statements for the period ending 31 December 2023.
According to him, the Board approved the implementation of initiatives geared towards safeguarding the business fundamentals and prospects which include:
“Pursuing regulated tariff increases through engagements with authorities; driving margin recovery through accelerated top-line growth, with a focus on executing on the expense efficiency programme; optimising capex deployment targeting capex intensity in the upper single digits; reducing US$ exposure with a focus on MTN Nigeria’s outstanding letters of credit (LC) obligations; and exploring strategic options to manage its tower lease obligations”.
