South Africa’s (SA) said this Tuesday its core earnings jumped 27.9% in \u200bthe first quarter, outpacing revenue growth as tighter cost control and \u200cstrong performances in Nigeria and Ghana boosted profit.<\/p>\n
Africa’s biggest telecom operator, which has more than 310 million customers in 16 markets across the continent, \u200bsaid its Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) for \u200bthe three months ended March 31 rose to 27.6 \u2060billion rand ($1.67 billion) in constant currency.<\/p>\n
Its EBITDA margin widened by \u200b3 percentage points to 47.6%.<\/p>\n
Group service revenue, excluding the effect of \u200bcurrency fluctuations, grew by 21.1%, led by strong performances in MTN Nigeria, up 41.7%, MTN Ghana, up 35.7%, MTN Cameroon up \u200b14.4% and MTN Cote d’Ivoire up 18.3%.<\/p>\n
Despite the continued competitive \u200bpressure on the prepaid market at MTN SA, service revenue growth edged \u200cup \u2060by 0.7%.<\/p>\n
MTN said its prepaid recovery strategy remains on track, focusing on improving distribution, refreshing its offerings, tightening credit and competing more actively.<\/p>\n
The company said the business is showing early signs \u200bof stabilising, with \u200bgrowth in cash \u2060recharges offsetting a decline in XtraTime usage, a service that allows prepaid customers to borrow airtime \u200band data bundles from MTN when running low.<\/p>\n
Data \u200bremained the \u2060biggest contributor to overall group service revenue growth, rising 35.4%. Voice revenue grew by 4.7%, while financial services revenue jumped 20%, MTN \u2060said.
\nOn \u200benergy supply risks, MTN said it \u200bis working with its partners to ensure sufficient energy availability to meet its ongoing \u200bdiesel needs.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15418,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-34290","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Its EBITDA margin widened by \u200b3 percentage points to 47.6%.","published_date":"","news_description":"Its EBITDA margin widened by \u200b3 percentage points to 47.6%.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34290","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\/34290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34291,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34290\/revisions\/34291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=34290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}