MTN Ghana, the industry’s sole substantial market power (SMP), has announced outstanding revenue and pre-tax profit growth for the first half of 2023.
This is despite the extremely difficult operating environment, both locally and globally, which saw major telcos on the continent, such as MTN Nigeria and Airtel Africa, record profit declines during the same period.
Aside from having to disconnect 5.4 million SIM cards in May of this year, the corporation had to overcome SMP limits, a massive inflation rate, growing power costs, and spectrum renewal costs, among other things, in order to produce the remarkable H1 results.
MTN Ghana made a pre-tax profit of GHS2.44 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023.
Total revenue for the period increased by 32.3% year on year to GHS6.18 billion, up from GHS4.67 billion the previous year.
Furthermore, the company’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) increased to GHS3.47 billion, a 29.5% increase from GHS2.68 billion in the same time last year.
MTN Ghana’s excellent performance was driven by spectacular increase in voice, data, and Mobile Money revenue, prompting the company to revise its medium-term guidance upward, anticipating well over 20% growth in service revenue.
According to the study, data income reached GHS2.6 billion, up 41% from the same period last year; voice revenue increased 14.4% year on year, reaching GHS1.7 billion. in contrast to mobile money.
The increase in data revenue was attributable mostly to an increase in active users, an increase in data traffic, and effective price changes. The increase in active users was attributable to the acquisition of new SIM cards on more smart devices as opposed to deactivated SIM cards, the majority of which were on feature phones.
Cash-out revenue and advanced services revenue, on the other hand, aided mobile money revenue growth. It is worth noting that MTN recently attempted to raise cash out fees and was forced to halt them till further notice.
Meanwhile, MTN Ghana’s digital income continues to fall, down 22.1% from the same period in 2022 to around GHS63.3 million.
According to the CEO, Selorm Adadevoh, the consistent drop in digital revenue since last year was due to a deliberate clean up of its value-added services (VAS) platform following several customers complaints and media reportage about hidden subscriptions causing customers’ airtime to vanish.
He said MTN has even started engaging customers and assisting them to sign out of subscriptions they did not sign up to, adding that the company is also rolling out more innovative digital content to excite customers and shore up its digital revenue in the second half of the year.
“MTN Ghana is executing portfolio rationalization initiatives to enhance digital services and aims to return to positive growth in digital revenues by 2024,” he noted.
Even though, this is just half year, MTN Ghana has already spent GHS1.5 billion out of the GHS2.4 billion capex (capital expenditure) it earmarked for the year, and according to the CEO, its spending has always focused on readying the company for 5G rollout because they are confident that will happen soon.
MTN Ghana has already spent GHS1.5 billion of the GHS2.4 billion capex (capital expenditure) budgeted for the year, and according to the CEO, the business’s spending has always been focused on preparing the company for 5G rollout, which they believe will happen shortly.
Source : newsghana
