Africa’s biggest telecoms operator MTN Group rebounded to an annual profit and said this Monday it would pay shareholders a dividend that exceeded guidance and planned to buy back shares.<\/p>\n
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The strong performance in the year ended December 31 followed a difficult 2024 for the group, when its largest business, MTN Nigeria, \u2060was hit by sharp currency devaluations, surging inflation and high interest rates.<\/p>\n
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For the full year 2025, strong performances in MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana, as well as R3.6 billion in cost savings ($213 million), delivered a profit before tax of R47.4 billion ($2.81 billion).<\/p>\n
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That compared to a restated loss before tax of R4.1 billion ($243 million) in 2024.<\/p>\n
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At the market opening in Johannesburg, South Africa (SA)-headquartered MTN shares surged 7.4% before paring gains to trade 4.8% higher at 11:43 CAT.<\/p>\n
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The operator declared a final dividend of 500 cents per share, \u200cup \u206045%, and 35% above the 370 cents minimum MTN had guided for the period.<\/p>\n
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Group Chief Executive Officer Ralph Mupita said in a media call that MTN would introduce an enhanced framework, targeting an annual distribution of 40% to 60% of equity-free cash flow in shareholder remuneration, effective now.<\/p>\n
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The framework includes \u2060a minimum cash dividend of 40% of equity\u2011free cash flow, with an additional 20% available for further cash payouts or share repurchases.<\/p>\n
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Mupita said the board had approved a buyback of up to \u20606 billion rand ($356 million), “to be executed opportunistically over three years from 2026”.<\/p>\n
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The group’s service revenue rose 22.7% to R218.5 billion ($12.96 billion), led by strong growth of 54.9% and 35.9% \u2060in Nigeria and Ghana, respectively, the mobile operator said.<\/p>\n
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In the pre-paid segment, where competitive pressures are severe, MTN SA reported overall service revenue growth of 2%.<\/p>\n
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–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":28891,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-28890","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Africa's biggest telecoms operator MTN Group rebounded to an annual profit","published_date":"2026-03-16 15:10:12","news_description":"Africa's biggest telecoms operator MTN Group rebounded to an annual profit","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/28890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/28890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28892,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/28890\/revisions\/28892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=28890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}