BY BAMIDELE FAMOOFO
Leading telecoms provider, MTN Nigeria Plc, is proposing a dividend of N10 per share to its shareholders for the financial year ended December 31, 2022.
The company grew its profit after tax by 14.7 percent to N89.83 billion from N78.34 billion printed in the same period of 2021.
Overall, pre-tax profit grew by 15.6 percent year- on- year to N133.30 billion in Q4-22 (2022FY: +22.3% y/y to N533.97 billion).
Service revenue grew by 23.8 percent y/y in Q4-22, driven by the expansion across the voice calls which grew by 10.2 percent in the review period, accounting for 50.5 percent of gross revenue.
Income from data grew by 43.2 percent y/y, representing 38.6 percent of revenue while value-added services which grew by 16.9 percent y/y, accounting for 4.0 percent of revenue.
According to MTN Nigeria, the increase in the voice revenue during the period was supported by the recovery from the NIN-SIM linkage directive, as the company revealed in its press release that reactivating more customers and ramping up gross connections aided the growth in voice revenue.
The growth recorded in MTNN’s data revenue resulted from the continued growth of active data users and increased data usage as data traffic grew by 66.6 percent y/y.
On the cost side, MTNN recorded higher network operating costs (+32.9% y/y) in Q4-22, triggered by the higher dollar prices on lease rental cost, accelerated gross connections, FX challenges and regulatory fees. Likewise, the elevated inflation in the environment drove the company to report a higher operating expenses growth (+26.8% y/y) in Q4-22. Nevertheless, despite the higher costs incurred, EBITDA settled higher by 19.5 percent y/y to N289.80 billion in Q4-22. Meanwhile, the EBITDA margin declined by 203bps to 52.1 percent in Q4-22 (2022FY: +17bps to 53.2%).
Further in, the company reported a higher net finance cost (+34.6% y/y), following the faster increase in finance cost (+20.3% y/y) relative to finance income (+2.7% y/y). We attribute the increase in finance cost to the combined impact of the higher interest rate and higher foreign exchange losses during the period.
