MTN to Focus on FinTech, Others

MTN said it will prioritise its FinTech operation, mobile money, recovery of prepaid, 4G coverage, Ayoba and MusicTime, as part of its business objectives for the second half of 2019.

The operator announced its plans for key markets including South Africa and Nigeria at the presentation of its results for the six months ended 30 June 2019 in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

Results included 12 per cent growth in adjusted headline earnings per share, service revenue grew by 9,7 per cent to R67.9-billion or N1.63 trillion and earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) expanded by 10,2 per cent to R31.2-billion or N747.86 billion.

The holding company net debt to EBITDA ratio remained stable at 2.3x (which the company said is well within its guidance range of 2.0 to 2.5x), and capex intensity dropped further to 16.9 per cent.

Rob Shuter, MTN group president and chief executive officer, said: “We had a good first half, reporting solid financial results, good commercial momentum and encouraging strategic progress. We saw growth of 12 per cent in adjusted headline earnings per share, which is the first time that we have delivered growth in this measure in recent years. Our service revenue grew just below 10 per cent and EBITDA just above 10 per cent, both on a constant currency basis. “

“Commercially, we had strong subscriber growth of 7.7 million in the first six months of the year to reach a total of 240 million subscribers. The number of active data users grew by 3.5 million to 82 million and our 30-day active Mobile Money users grew by 2.4 million to 30 million.”

MTN added in its statement that in South Africa, it had to deal with a weak macro-economic environment, as well as the introduction of new end-user requirements and the repricing of out-of-bundle data rates.