Telecoms giant, MTN Ghana, has made earnings of GH¢502 million before tax for the first three months of this year, representing about 62% of the amount recorded for the same period in 2019.
In a circular to shareholders, MTN Ghana stated “Our strong growth in revenue coupled with our cash management initiatives resulted in a strong growth (62.1%) in profit after tax and improved our cash generation from our operation by 12.5%.”
The circular said “Service revenue increased by 20.4%, underpinned by double-digit growth in voice, data and Mobile Money revenue.”
According to MTN “Voice growth was resilient (up 16.6%), driven by an increase in the number of active subscribers (+4.5%) as well as various customer value management (CVM) initiatives, which helped to manage churn and support usage.
“The contribution of voice to total service revenue decreased from 47.1% to 45.6%, as other lines of revenue continued to grow faster than the traditional business in line with our revenue diversification strategy.”
The double-digit increase in data revenue (up 19.4%) was attributable to growth in active data users (+6.1%) and growth in the number of smartphones on the network (+2.1%). Data revenue’s contribution to service revenue decreased marginally from 26.7% to 26.5%.
Mobile Money revenue grew strongly (up 30.4%) and benefited from an increase in the number of active subscribers (+2.1%), higher transactional activity of person-to-person and growth in more advanced services such as retail merchant payments and international remittances.
Mobile Money revenue’s contribution to service revenue increased from 17.9% to 19.4%. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation grew by 34.5% with a margin expansion of 5.5 percentage points to 53.4%.
“This margin improvement was a result of our cost efficiency initiatives underpinned by continued distribution efficiencies.”
MTN Ghana has declared an interim dividend of 3 pesewas for this year. This means MTN will pay a total of GH¢369 million to shareholders.
Credit: myjoyonline.com
