South Africa was the shining star in MTN’s stable of 19 markets, recording stellar performance in the third quarter of 2022 and lifting the group in the process.
MTN SA gained market share in the first nine months of 2022, growing subscriber numbers by more than 800 000 in the period to 30 September.
Africa’s biggest telecoms company today reported its performance for the first nine months of 2022, crediting its South African subsidiary as a tower of strength in the period.
MTN South Africa is the second-largest contributor to MTN Group service revenue after MTN Nigeria.
In the period under review, total MTN Group subscribers increased by 6.8% to 285 million, the fintech customer base rose by 23.3% to 63 million, and fintech transaction volumes increased by a third to 9.5 billion.
MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita today gave an account of the telco’s showing in the nine months, citing solid performance by South African operations as a major contributor to the group’s overall results.
SA grew subscriber numbers by more than 800 000, or 8.1%, to 35.9 million in the period to 30 September, service revenue rose by 3.5% and enterprise business continued to expand, delivering service revenue growth of 19.7%.
The consumer postpaid business was also resilient, with growth of 4.2%. Mupita noted the rising cost of living and the impact of load-shedding was felt most acutely in the consumer prepaid market, where service revenue grew by 0.4% in the period.
“Amid unprecedented load-shedding, which negatively affected network availability, MTN South Africa expanded market share, delivered encouraging underlying service revenue growth, strong expense controls, investment in network resilience and expanding the 5G coverage.
“Supported by an increase in smartphone penetration, MTN SA continued to make data more affordable – the effective data tariff reduced by 23.4% year-on-year (YOY). This helped stimulate usage for both prepaid and postpaid subscribers.
“Work on network resilience and availability progressed well, but persistent load-shedding in the last quarter of the year could impact revenue growth, particularly in the consumer prepaid market.”
Turning to the overall group results, Mupita reported solid financial and operational performance, saying MTN was encouraged by the growth and expansion of its fintech ecosystem.
Rock-hard performance
Highlights of the group’s financial metrics include service revenue growth of 14.3%, voice revenue was up by 2.7%, data revenue surged by 33.2%, fintech revenue rose by 12.9%, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were up by 14.7%.
Mupita comments: “MTN Group remained resilient in the first nine months of 2022 under difficult macroeconomic, geopolitical and regulatory conditions, delivering a solid operational and financial performance.
“Growth in data traffic and fintech transaction volumes continued to be strong, demonstrating that structurally higher demand for data and fintech services in our markets was sustained during this challenging period.
“In our platforms, fintech revenue rose by 12.9% year-on-year, with Mobile Money (MoMo) active monthly users up by 23.3% YOY and the volume of transactions processed through our platform up by 32.7% in Q3 2022 YOY to 9.5 billion transactions.
“We are encouraged by the overall strength of our fintech ecosystem, with solid momentum in the underlying KPIs across our e-commerce and payments, banktech, remittances and joint venture insurtech verticals, as well as the build out of agents, merchants and MoMo app adoption by our subscribers.”
Addressing performance in the telco’s most lucrative market, Nigeria, Mupita says the operations had a strong showing notwithstanding a challenging environment.
MTN Nigeria service revenue grew in line with medium-term guidance of at least 20%, says Mupita.
Voice revenue grew by 4.5%, and data revenue rose by 50.1% on increased subscribers and data usage.
This, Mupita says, was sustained by aggressive 4G network expansion and enhanced quality and capacity of the network.
“Both supported rising data traffic as the drive to convert existing subscribers on the 3G network to 4G, as well as smartphone penetration, continued. As a result, data traffic grew by 70.6% YOY, with 4G accounting for 78.6% of overall traffic, while data usage (MB per user) rose by 52.2%.
“The number of smartphones on the network continued to increase, with the addition of about 4.4 million in the nine months, bringing smartphone penetration to 52%. In terms of fixed broadband penetration, MTN Nigeria added over 430 000 users, bringing the user base to 1.1 million.
“The business continued to advance its home broadband strategy with the commercial launch of the 5G network, providing coverage in key cities in the six geopolitical regions. Consequently, MTN Nigeria deployed 5G routers delivering an average download speed of 470 megabits per second and creating experiences that position MTN Nigeria as the broadband service provider of choice.”
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