MTN Nigeria’s three-month profit climbs 31% as turnover reaches N471 billion

MTN Nigeria (MTNN), the local unit of Africa’s biggest mobile telecommunications provider MTN Group, turned in a 31.3 per cent growth in net income for the first quarter of 2022, riding on a boom that helped income from data services surge by more than a half.

The wireless operator earned N471 billion in revenue, according to its unaudited earnings report issued on Friday, meaning an improvement of more than a fifth over the figure recorded January through March last year.

That happened as active data users enlarged by 3.4 million to 35.9 million even though mobile subscribers fell a little by 1.8 per cent.

MTN cited regulatory curbs from sales and activations of new subscriber identity module (SIM) card as the ground for the latter.

“In terms of strategic milestones, we concluded the first phase of a series of transactions to increase Nigerian ownership in MTN Nigeria, and we are delighted to have welcomed 126,720 retail investors to our shareholder base, many of whom are first-time investors,” Karl Toriola, CEO MTNN, said in a note accompanying the financials.

“This includes Nigerian pension funds representing approximately 6.5 million Nigerian contributors.”

MTNN pre-tax profit for the review period added up to N143.6 billion, 39.4 per cent stronger than what was reported in the same period of last year. Profit after tax was up by 31.3 per cent at N96.8 billion.

The telco committed 80.8 per cent more to its capex during the quarter, bringing its spend for that purpose to N162.5 billion.

Earlier in April, it received a super-agent permit from the Central Bank of Nigeria to set up a payments unit that will run several services offered by commercial banks.

The milestone implies it will be joining other telecom operators that have branched out into payments including Globacom (Money Master PSB), Etisalat (9PSB) and most recently Airtel Africa (Smartcash PSB).