In the first quarter of 2022, MTN Nigeria Communications PLC made N421.49 billion from calls and data.
This represents a 20.32 percent increase over the N350.31 billion in voice and data revenue generated by the telecom business at the same time in 2021. MTN announced in its Q1 2021 announcement that its total revenue in 2022 was N470.98 billion.
Because of legislative restrictions on new SIM sales and activations, the company’s subscribers fell by 1.3 million to 70.2 million years over year. It also said that active data users surged by 35.9% year over year to 35.9 million, while fintech subscribers jumped by 10.7% to 10.7 million.
Karl Toriola, MTN Nigeria’s Chief Executive Officer, stated of the results, “We continued to make good progress in the first quarter, building on the momentum we achieved in Q4 2021 and delivering several key milestones as we grow our connectivity business and platforms.
“This was achieved against a backdrop of significant geopolitical volatility exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. This conflict has significantly impacted energy prices, broader inflation, supply chains, and consumer spending.”
According to him, MTN had 139,000 retail investors after the company’s first phase of a series of transactions to expand local ownership saw 126,720 individuals become shareholders.
He went on to say that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s ultimate permission for its MoMo Payment Service Bank will allow the company to offer financial services and promote financial inclusion in Nigeria.
According to Toriola, the company now has 166,000 active MoMo agents. “Although our mobile subscriber base declined by 1.9 percent YoY from 71.5 million in March 2021 to 70.2 million in Q4 2021 as we ramped up capacity for SIM registration and NIN enrolment, we maintained the growth trajectory from Q4 2021 as we ramped up capacity for SIM registration and NIN enrolment,” he said.
“As a result, we added 1.7 million subscribers in Q1 2022. In addition, active data subscribers rose by 10.5 per cent YoY to 35.9 million, with 1.6 million added in Q1 as we continued to drive data conversion from our new and existing subscriber base.
“To enable the growth in subscribers and traffic, we continued to enhance the capacity of our network. In doing so, we frontloaded our capex plan for the year, deploying capex of N162.5bn in the period to accommodate the sustained demand for data and accelerate the rollout of our 4G network, which now covers approximately 72 per cent of the population and accounts for 76 per cent of data traffic.”
He added that about 60 million MTN subscribers had submitted their NINs.
Meanwhile, the firm approved a dividend payment of N174.53bn, translating to N8.57 kobo per every 2 kobos ordinary shares to its shareholders.
