MTN Nigeria, on Monday, released its audited results for the financial year ended 31 December 2020, where it raked in N1.3 trillion service revenue in the last fiscal year, which is a 14.7 per cent increase in revenue.

The telecoms company, which is the largest in Nigeria by subscriber number and market share, also recorded increased number of subscribers by 12.2 million to reach 76.5 million as at December last year.

MTN Nigeria financial report also showed increase in active data users by 7.4 million to reach 32.6 million.

Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, and Amortisation (EBITDA), grew by 9.7 per cent to N685.7 billion, while EBITDA margin declined by 2.5 percentage points to 50.9 per cent. Its profit before tax grew by 2.6 per cent to N298.9 billion, while Earnings Per Share (EPS) rose by 0.9 per cent to N10.

MTN board has therefore proposed a final dividend of N5.90 kobo per share to be paid out of distributable net income. This brings the total dividend for the year to N9.40 kobo per share, representing an increase of 18.7 per cent.

Commenting on the financial report, the outgoing Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, Mr. Ferdi Moolman said MTN Nigeria made considerable progress in growing the base for its business, despite the challenges posed by COVID-19 pandemic.

According to him, “We connected 12.2 million new subscribers to access communication services. The growth in our subscriber base provided support for voice revenue, which accounted for 67.1 per cent of service revenue and rose by 5.9 per cent, with an acceleration in growth to 8.9 per cent year-on-year in the second half of last year. This was enabled by our expanded customer acquisition touchpoints, rural telephony initiatives and revamped acquisition offers. The suspension of new SIM registration in mid-December did not have a significant impact on voice revenue as we saw an increased level of activity from the existing base.

“Data revenue maintained the positive momentum from Q2, prompted by the COVID-19 lockdowns, rising by 51.2 per cent. The performance in data was led by a combination of increased subscribers, usage and ultimately traffic, supported by increased network capacity and 4G penetration. Data traffic rose by 126.5 per cent and average usage by 64.0 per cent. We added approximately 8.2 million new smartphones to the network, bringing smartphone penetration to 45.9 per cent of our base, up from 41.9 per cent in 2019.”