MTN takes pain

The MTN Group has released its interim results for the half-year ended 30 June 2024, revealing a 20.8% decline in service revenue, a 41.2% decline in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA), and a R7.39 billion loss.

Group service revenue dropped from R107.7 billion in H1 2023 to R85.3 billion in H1 2024, while EBITDA dropped from R49.4 billion to R29 billion.

It noted that service revenue grew by 12.1% on a constant currency basis, while EBITDA dropped by 0.4% on a constant currency basis.

The MTN Group reported a loss of R7.39 billion during H1 2024 — its first loss since 2016. Last year it had reported a profit of R4.14 billion during the comparable period.

However, the devaluation of the Nigerian naira, which hindered income from the key market, hit its financial performance hard.

Its South Africa business performed relatively well, increasing service revenue by 3.3% and EBITDA by 3.8%. It notes that the EBITDA figure is up 4.3%, excluding the gain on the disposal of towers.

Looking at specific revenue components, data revenue grew by 2.4%, while revenue from outgoing voice calls declined by 5.5%.

MTN’s enterprise revenue grew by 15%, and wholesale revenue decreased by 0.1%.

Its fintech operations saw significant growth, with revenue rising by 59.1%. Digital revenue grew by 10.2%.

“MTN SA continued to navigate the challenging operating environment in South Africa, benefiting from a slight easing of forex volatility and consumer price inflation,” said MTN.

“Despite the macro headwinds, MTN SA delivered a resilient performance in the first half of 2024, with encouraging momentum in the second quarter. Service revenue growth accelerated to 3.6% in Q2 2024, from 3.0% in Q1.”

MTN South Africa noted that it successfully completed network resilience initiatives in the fourth quarter of the previous year, enabling it to provide average network availability of over 95%, even under stage 6 load-shedding.

“The improved network availability in H1 has supported an improvement in customer satisfaction, as evidenced by the uplift in MTN SA’s net promoter score (NPS) to the leading position in South Africa since March 2024,” it said.