MTN Ghana registered a profit of ¢2.77 billion, about 32% year-on-year growth in the first nine months of 2023.

According to its Financial Performance at the end of September 2023, the telecom giant delivered a 36.0% year-on-year increase in service revenue, driven mainly by growth in voice, data, and mobile money.

This was underpinned by the continued execution of Ambition 2025 and sustained investments in capital expenditure to support improvements in service quality and the expansion of network capacity and coverage.

Voice

Its mobile voice revenue grew by 14.5% year-on-year to ¢2.7 billion. The impact of the National Communications Authority’s (NCA) directive on SIM disconnections continued to impact the subscriber base, resulting in a 9.3% year-on-year decrease to 25.8 million.

The voice revenue it said contributed to service revenue declined from 33.4% to 28.1%.

Data

There was also a strong data revenue growth of 47.6% year-on-year to ¢4.1 billion. This is attributed to a 2.7% year-on-year increase in the number of active users and continued increases in MB consumed per active user per month (+36.0% year-on-year).

It led to data traffic rising by 39.6% year-on-year. The contribution of data revenue to service revenue, it said increased from 39.5% to 42.8% year-on-year.

Mobile money

For mobile money (MoMo), revenue increased by 51.6% year-on-year to ¢2.1 billion. This was underpinned by the growth of 63.4% year-on-year in cash-out revenue, a 63.2% year-on-year increase in advanced services revenue and 15.0% year-on-year growth in peer-to-peer (P2P) revenue.

The contribution of MoMo revenue to service revenue increased from 19.1% to 21.3% year-on-year.

Digital

For digital revenue, it decreased by 15.0% year-on-year to ¢96.3 million.

However, the company said it has observed a positive turn-around in the third quarter, with a 3.5% quarter-on-quarter growth, and expects it to continue through the fourth quarter and beyond.

EBITDA

The Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) increased by 32.6% year-on-year to ¢5.4 billion with a margin decline of 1.5 percentage points to 56.0% due to the impact of elevated inflation.

“We remain committed to executing our expense efficiency programme, the impact of which continues to reduce the full exposure of the current macroeconomic challenges on the business”, it stated.

Outlook

MTN Ghana pointed out that it will continue to invest to develop its platforms and improve its network and services to unlock value for stakeholders in line with our Ambition 2025 strategy.

“We will also keep exploring efficiency measures, preserving liquidity, and take steps to strengthen the balance sheet further against a background of uncertainties within the operating environment. Taking into consideration the macroeconomic uncertainties, MTN Ghana maintains its guidance of high-twenties (in percentage terms) growth in service revenue”.