MTN Ghana, has delivered a strong profit after tax growth of 33.6% year-on-year (YoY) to GH¢1.01 billion as at December 2019. The increased profitability performance was anchored on strong service revenue growth coupled with successful execution of cost efficient strategies.

These were announced by the Chairman of the MTN Ghana Board, Mr Ishmael Yamson at this year’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) that was held virtually.

He said that service revenue grew by 22.8% YoY, driven by excellent growth in revenues from Voice, Data and MoMo. Voice revenue, he said, increased by 19.4% YoY to GH¢2.31 billion and
contributed 44.9% of service revenue.

According to Mr Yamson, data revenue growth was strong at 32.5% YoY to GH¢1.46 billion
and contributed 28.4% of service revenue while MoMo revenue continued to grow strongly, increasing by 28.0% YoY to GH¢0.96 billion contributing 18.6% of service revenue.

Also in 2019, the company’s operating costs were down by 3.0% on the back of various cost efficient initiatives which impacted positively on the cost base and efficiency levels in 2019.

Mr Yamson stated that the company had a market capitalisation of GH¢8.6 billion making it the third largest listed company on the Ghana Stock Exchange and was the most traded stock on the Ghana Stock Exchange accounting for about 52.7% of stock market turnover.

After reviewing the full year performance of the company in 2019, the Board recommended a final dividend of 4 pesewas on ordinary shares bringing the total dividend for the year 2019 to 6 pesewas per share or 73.1% of profit after tax and a 20.0% YoY increase in dividend per share.

My Yamson indicated that the company’s overall performance generated a return on equity of 36.0% to the shareholders. This represented a YoY improvement of 4.7 percentage points.

The CEO of MTN Ghana, Mr Selorm Adadevoh, noted that the company maintained market leadership with 55.2% market share. He said that despite the challenging environment, MTN Ghana
continued to be resilient and had witnessed increasing customer confidence in the brand.

He said that the business executed well on its capex plans in the year, supporting significant improvement in coverage expansion and maintenance of the network, customer experience and quality of service (QoS). He said that during the year 2019, MTN rolled out 280 2G, 557 3G,
900 4G and 100 rural telephony sites.

Mr Adadevoh said that the number of subscribers increased by 12.3% to 22.6 million with a voice market share of 55.2%. Data subscribers also increased by 28.6% to 20.1 million with a data market share of 71.7%. As regards mobile money (momo), he noted that registered subscribers increased by 10.6% to 15.1 million with a MoMo transacted value share of 98.0%.

Mr Adadevoh also stated that one of MTN’s focused areas was Sustainability. To this end, the company continued to invest in communities, with the MTN Ghana Foundation support reaching a total of 149 projects at a cost of GH¢41 million, since the Foundation’s inception in 2007. In 2019, the Foundation initiated eight new projects in education, three in health and one in economic empowerment.

Mr Adadevoh said that 2019 marked the ‘Year of the customer’ for the company. He stressed that the company was building on that foundation in 2020 as she transitioned from a traditional mobile telecommunications operator to an emerging digital operator. In line with the transition journey, he announced that MTN Ghana had declared 2020 as the ‘Year of the Customer: the Digital Experience’ with a focus on digitalisation as a tool to enhance customer experience as well as
create value for her shareholders.

As regards the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr Adadevoh pointed out that while the company monitored unfolding developments, multiple scenarios were being explored to mitigate the impact on the business. He said that the company would continue to drive down operational cost while efficiently investing in capital expenditure to optimise network performance.

Mr Selorm Adadevoh thanked all valued customers for their loyalty and the staff for their sacrifices and unwavering commitment to the MTN vision.

Source: Business Ghana with information from MTN Ghana 2019 Annual Report