Speaking to stakeholders at the Ghana Investor Connect, the CEO of MTN Ghana, Mr. Selorm Adadevor said that MTN Ghana had tried to maintain its margin despite tough economic challenges due to factors such as rising inflation (down from 54.1 percent in December 2022 to 42.5 percent in June 2023), depreciation of the Ghana Cedi against the United States Dollar (28.2 percent) and other major trading currencies in the first half of 2023, increased fuel cost and increased utility cost among others.

Madam Antoinette Kwofie, Chief Finance Officer at MTN Ghana said that Data was the main contributor to their revenue at GHS2.6 billion while their total revenue for the period under review stood at GHS6.2 billion, a 32.4 percent rise in comparison to the first half of 2022 which stood at GHS 4.7 billion.

Revenue from Mobile Money also rose to  GHC 1.3 billion which she described as encouraging despite the E-Levy taxes while voice revenue witnessed a strong growth at GHS1.8 billion Year on Year ( Y-OY 13.9 per cent) despite the reduction in the number of subscribers due to the SIM Card re-registration exercise. Earnings Per Share (EPS) also increased by 42.3 percent from 0.163 in the first half of 2022 to 0.232 in the first half of this year.

Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation (EBITDA), Madam Kwofie said increased by 29.4 percent Y-o-Y to GHS3.5 billion while digital revenue declined by 22.1 percent Y-o-Y to GHS63.6 million.

Regarding their contribution to the government's development projects through the MTN Foundation, Mr. Adadevor said that MTN Ghana had engaged in 166 projects at a cost of about GHC106.5 million and impacted about 4.5 million lives directly and indirectly in Ghana. Some of these projects were hospitals, schools, blood bank construction, and Youth development initiatives. MTN Ghana had also paid about GHC3.0 billion in taxes to the government, he added.

He disclosed that MTN Ghana had signed a one-year agreement with Vodafone to extend national roaming on 2G beyond Volta to other areas in the country and also reached an agreement with AT Ghana (AirtelTigo) for a four-month national roaming pilot, as a first step toward a longer-term commitment. They had also designed an Application Programming Interface (API) to allow banks to detect potential SIM card swaps resulting in digital financial scams.

Mr. Adadevor noted that as part of MTN'S Ambition 2025 agenda, MTN Ghana was poised to lead digital solutions in Africa. He said that they were working to achieve this through their platforms which included Fintech, Digital, Enterprise, Naas, and Chenosis. They were also re-negotiating tower agreements to mitigate rising inflation and energy costs, he added. He said that despite the current rate of data and smartphone penetration (60 percent) there was still an opportunity to increase this figure.