MTN sells its Cyprus business to Monaco Telecom
MTN Group will use the funds from the sale of its business in Cyprus to pay down debts and strengthen its balance sheet, CEO Rob Shuter says. The network operator, which trimmed its dividend to reduce debts worth nearly R60bn, said on Monday it had agreed to sell its operations on the Mediterranean island for €260m in cash. The buyer, Monaco Telecom, would pay fees to MTN to keep using its brand for up to three years. MTN Cyprus is MTN Group’s smallest unit by subscribers — it had 426,000 subscribers there at the end of March — and is its only operation outside of the Middle East and Africa. Shuter told Business Day on Monday MTN would use the cash "for general corporate purposes", including reducing debt.
While MTN Cyprus had performed well in recent years, the country of about 1-million people did not fit the group’s strategy to target emerging markets where internet penetration was growing quickly. "There’s been a lot of interest in it over the past year or so. So we though...
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