MTN Group has reported a boost in revenue and subscriber rate despite an economically challenging 2023.
Its revenue grew by 13.5% to $11 billion, with data revenue making up $4.4 billion, voice revenue accounting for $4.3 billion, and its fintech revenue arm, MTN MoMo, making up the remaining $1.11 billion.
The telco acknowledged that its finances were impacted by a negative external environment due to inflation (~17%), forex volatility, scarcity, and ongoing political tensions in markets like Sudan.
Meanwhile, the total number of active users increased to 295 million across all markets, with active data subscribers increasing by more than 9% to 150 million and active mobile money users up by 5% to 72.5 million.
It also experienced a 33% growth in the volume of its fintech transactions, reaching 17.6 billion, while the value of transactions across the fintech platform increased to $272 billion.
In October 2023, Techpoint Africa reported that MTN Nigeria’s mobile money sector was steadily expanding, with a rise in active wallets to 3.5 million, accounting for the fintech user base even though, with naira devaluation, operating expenses rose by 34.7%, while profit before tax declined by 42%.
Despite facing challenges such as load shedding in South Africa, the telco revealed it spent $527 million on capital projects to improve network capacity expansion and power resilience.
Power and security resilience got investments of more than $137 million.
The company also stated that by the end of the year, network availability across its entire infrastructure had reached up to 95%, and even going as high as 98% with sites where resilience investment had been completed.
Mastercard agreed to invest up to $200 million for a minority stake in telco’s fintech arm, valued at $5.2 billion, as part of its progress in developing its fintech and fibre businesses.
