We are done losing market share in South Africa – MTN
MTN has published its financial results for the year ended 31 December 2018.
The mobile operator stated that service revenue across the group was up 10.7%, while MTN South Africa’s service revenue was also up – but by a smaller margin of 4.2%.
MTN also announced that its mobile subscriber base in South Africa had increased by 5.7% from December 2017 to 31.2 million, including telemetry subscribers.
MTN South Africa has a total of 13.6 million active data users and falls into the number two position in the market behind Vodacom.
Drawing the line
In its previous quarterly update for the period ended 30 September 2018, MTN’s results reflected an overall decrease in subscribers – with prepaid customers decreasing by 3.4% and postpaid users increasing by 2.1% quarter-on-quarter.
At this point, the company had a total of 23.7 million prepaid customers and 2.9 million postpaid users.
The company’s latest results show that it has a total of 25.4 million prepaid subscribers and 2.9 million postpaid users, excluding telemetry subscribers.
MTN South Africa has recovered after losing subscribers throughout the year, and MTN Group CEO Rob Shuter said they were done losing market share to competitors.
“We are drawing the line in market share losses for MTN South Africa,” Shuter said at the company’s financial results presentation in Johannesburg.
“We have given up what we have given up, and going forward we are not going to be losing any more market share.”
MTN’s current share of the South African cellular market is 28.40%, he said.
Shuter added that the company was pleased with the continued rollout of the MTN network in South Africa, with the operator’s 4G network reaching 90% population coverage.
MTN’s wholesale roaming agreement with Cell C also helped to boost the group’s revenue over the last quarter, Shuter said.
“Of course, our results were strengthened in Q4 by the Cell C agreement, but even stripping that out we are performing well relative to the competition,” he said.
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