MTN Nigeria grew its service revenue by 33.6 per cent to N2.4t trillion, boosted by data revenues of N1.14t trillion during the three quarters of 2024.
The data revenue represents 52.3 percent growth from N749.53 billion during the comparable period of 2023.
According to its financial report released to the Nigerian Exchange Limited, Nigeria’s largest telecom operator reported a profit after tax of N4.1 billion for the third quarter ended September 2024, marking a slight improvement amid ongoing financial challenges.
However, despite this profit in Q3, the overall financial results for the nine-month period (three quarters) revealed a significant loss after tax of N514.9 billion, primarily driven by substantial foreign exchange losses.
The telecom operator also disclosed an adjusted profit after tax of N118.5 billion, reflecting a 59.2 percent decrease compared to the previous year.
This adjusted figure indicates that, without the forex losses, the company would have reported a profit during this period.
MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola noted that in the first nine months of 2024, the company sustained the growth in its underlying operating performance underpinned by its resilient business model and operational agility despite challenging conditions.
“Our commercial momentum drove broad-based growth across all revenue segments, demonstrating the underlying strength and resilience of the business. We recorded an increase in service revenue of 33.6 percent, which was ahead of the average inflation rate in the period. This growth was led by data and supported by voice, fintech, and digital services,” stated Toriola.
He highlighted that its subscriber base decreased by 0.9 per cent to 77 million, impacted by the NIN-SIM regulations, but its active data users increased by 5.1 per cent to 45.3 million. Voice traffic increased by 9.8 per cent, and data traffic grew by 42.1 percent. MTN noted that data usage per user grew by 31.2 per cent to 11.3 GB, supported by the rising demand for data and digital services.
He noted that the further depreciation of the naira arising from the revaluation of foreign currency denominated obligations resulted in a loss after tax for the 9-month period of N514.9 billion (2023: 15.0bn loss, restated).
“This resulted in negative retained earnings and shareholders’ equity of N723.0 billion (December 2023: negative N208.0 billion) and N573.6 billion (December 2023: negative N40.8 billion), respectively.
“Adjusting for the net forex losses, PAT would have been positive N118.5 billion (down by 59.2 percent). Further adjusting for the impact of forex in our opex, PAT would have been up by 13.3 percent to N367.1 billion.
“Despite the reported losses, we delivered a positive free cash flow of N536.8 billion, up 21.9 percent, helped by favourable working capital movements and lower capex in the period,” he said.
