MTN Uganda offices. File Photo | Uganda Business News Africa’s leading mobile operator, MTN Group on Thursday announced its re-positioned strategy – Ambition 2025 – to accelerate growth and reveal the value of its infrastructure assets and platforms. While unveiling their 2025 ambition, the telco reported a very strong set of operational and financial results for 2020, demonstrating business resilience under Covid-19 pressures and a challenging macroeconomic environment.
According to the telecom’s report, as of 2020, they added 29 million subscribers —to reach a total of 280 million across all its 21 markets in Africa. It reported a 52% increase in adjusted headline earnings per share, a four-percentage point increase in return on equity to 17% and more than doubled the operating cash flow to R28.3 billion (approx., UGX6.9 trillion).
In a statement released to the press on Thursday, the Group’s Chief Executive, Ralph Mupita , said, “We continued to perform favorably against our medium-term targets. In constant currency terms, service revenue grew 11,9% to R170 billion and EBITDA increased by 13,4%, maintaining our strong operating leverage.” He added that the Group’s EBITDA margin improved by 0,9pp to 42,7%, benefiting from the execution of our expense efficiency programme.
In Uganda, MTN posted very strong and resilient performance in Q4 of 2020 despite the Covid-19 disruptions. The subscriber base increased by 12.3% to 14.2 million subscribers, up from 12.6 million the previous year. Active data users were up by 34.8% to 4.6 million, which drove an increase in traffic also brought about by higher levels of online demand resulting from the effects of the pandemic. This was supported by learn-from-home and work-from-home offerings provided for our customers.
In pursuit of our financial inclusion objectives and growth strategy, Mobile Money users grew by 14.4% YOY to 8.5 million, spurred by the move towards cashless financial transactions to avert the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. While Covid-19 accelerated the adoption of mobile financial services, growth in fintech revenue was moderated by reductions in transaction fees to support our customers, lockdown restrictions on agents and a slowdown in economic activity. However, we believe that this builds a solid base for future growth in our fintech business.
Absolute EBITDA in constant currency terms increased by 14.9% YoY in 2020, with a 2,4pp increase in EBITDA margin to 49.5%. This was driven by a well-executed sustainable cost efficiency program.
At the onset of the Covid-19 in the country, MTN Uganda undertook […]