Half-year earnings of MTN’s Ghanaian business rocket

MTN’s fast-growing Ghanaian business increased earnings by more than half in the six months to end-June thanks in part to better mobile-money revenues.

“MTN Ghana delivered a strong performance for the period,” the company said on Monday.

MTN Group’s fourth-largest market by subscribers grew earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation 50.3% to 1.2bn Ghanaian Cedi ($220m).

Service revenues rose 18.8%, after growing 27.9% in the first half of 2018. Subscriber numbers increased 6.2% to 21.3-million.

Revenues were boosted by “the continued expansion in voice, data and mobile financial services”.

Data revenue grew 27.7% and MTN Mobile Money revenue increased 53.3% mainly thanks “to a higher number of person-to-person (P2P) transactions as well as good growth in more advanced services such as retail merchant payments”.

The company added 280 2G, 557 3G, 900 4G and 100 rural telephony sites in the interim period.

It labelled 2019 as their “year of the customer” and said MTN Ghana “will continue to pursue its Bright strategy through the third quarter with the prime focus on customer experience and creating value for shareholders”.

MTN’s shares, which have fully recovered from a sell-off in the second half of 2018 stemming from regulatory woes in Nigeria, were 0.4% down at R110.90 in early trade on Monday.

hedleyn@businesslive.co.za