Month: October 2020

MTN Group on Friday announced a strong set of financial results for the third quarter, supported by the performance of its larger operations in South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, and good group-wide growth in subscriber numbers despite challenging trading conditions which have taken a toll on people everywhere.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to impact lives and livelihoods across our markets, the group has demonstrated strong operational execution and resilience,” said MTN Group president and chief executive officer Ralph Mupita.

To meet the increase in data and digital usage, he added that MTN had focused its investment on network capacity and resilience and modernising its IT systems, spending R16 billion in the year to the end of the third quarter.

Service revenue grew by 11,4% to more than R43 billion. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 13,9% and the group EBITDA margin widened by 1,4 percentage points to 43,3%, in line with medium-term targets.

“We recorded solid growth in voice revenue of 3,9%, which reflects an encouraging recovery supported by the easing of lockdown restrictions,” said Mupita. “Data revenue grew by 31,9%, bolstered by increased demand for work-from-home services, digital entertainment as well as online education offerings.”

The group also reported growth of 21,0% in fintech revenue and 37,5% in digital revenue, driven by the increased adoption and usage of digital offerings.

In the quarter, MTN added 12 million subscribers to reach a total of 273 million across 21 markets, as well as adding 5,3 million active data users to 107 million. In our work to enable greater financial inclusion, we reached a significant milestone by surpassing the 40 million MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) user mark, an addition of 3,5 million in the quarter to 41,8 million at end-September.

Apart from greater adoption brought on by COVID-19, more people used MoMo because of enhancements to the functionality of the MoMo app, the large increase in registered MoMo agents, as well as the integration of MoMo into our instant messaging platform Ayoba in some of our markets,” said Mupita.

MTN South Africa performed particularly well, sustaining its turnaround, with an acceleration in its core consumer and enterprise business units. MTN Nigeria recorded a solid result with some recovery in revenue growth under difficult operating conditions, and MTN Ghana delivered another good performance.

As part of its asset realisation programme, MTN Group completed its exit from its 18,9% investment in e-commerce venture Jumia as well as the localisation of an 8% shareholding in MTN Zambia, realising net proceeds of approximately R2,3 billion and R204 million respectively.

Looking ahead, Mupita said the group remained focused on managing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on its staff, customers, networks and the balance sheet and liquidity profile of the group.  Through its Y’ello Hope initiative, it would continue to support those stakeholders who have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic.

“Despite the relaxation of lockdown restrictions, the operating environment remains challenging and uncertain. We will continue to build on our operational and financial resilience. We have now increased our full year forecast for capital expenditure to R26 billion, to ensure that our networks provide reliable connectivity and digital services to all of our 273 million-and-growing subscriber base,” he said.

MTN Group on Monday announced two important new appointments: that of chief executive officer of major subsidiary MTN Nigeria Communications Plc and that of MTN Group chief risk officer, a new group executive committee (exco) position. Both are effective from 1 March 2021.

Karl Toriola, current vice president for MTN Group’s West and Central Africa (WECA) region, will take over as MTN Nigeria CEO from Ferdi Moolman, who has served MTN Nigeria with distinction in this role for the past five years. Ferdi will return to South Africa, where he will assume the new role of group chief risk officer.

Karl has a BSc Hons in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and a MSc in Communication Systems. Ferdi has a BCom and BCompt. He is a CA(SA). Both will remain members of the group’s exco.

Ferdi Moolman appointed as the new MTN Group chief risk officer

Ferdi (57) joined MTN in 2002 and has held several senior positions within the group in Nigeria and in Iran. He has spent the past five years as the CEO of MTN Nigeria and, as its CFO prior to that. During that time, significant progress has been made in stabilising the business and setting it on a sustainable growth path.

The management of enterprise-wide risk is integral to MTN’s growth strategy and Ferdi will bring extensive operational and financial experience to the role given his deep knowledge of the MTN Group, its markets and the telecoms sector. Ferdi will remain on the board of MTN Nigeria and will in due course be appointed to other material subsidiary boards given his new group responsibility.

Karl Toriola appointed as the new MTN Nigeria CEO

In his five years as VP of MTN’s WECA region, Karl has overseen the steady progress of the operating companies in the region, notably the turnaround of MTN Ivory Coast and MTN Cameroon over the past two years.

In addition, the WECA markets have made significant commercial and strategic strides, including the improvement of market share and the development of mobile financial services. The latter in particular is an important driver of the group’s medium- to long-term growth strategy.

Since joining the group in 2006, Karl (48) has also held a number of senior operational roles at MTN, including chief technical officer of MTN Nigeria and CEO of MTN Cameroon. He is also a board member on a number of companies within the group, including MTN Nigeria. Karl’s successor as VP for WECA will be announced after the group strategy review is completed by the end of November 2020.

Exemplary leadership, extensive experience

“Karl brings extensive technical and commercial experience, as well as a deep understanding of the Nigeria market to the role,” commented MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita. “Karl started his MTN career in his home country at MTN Nigeria 14 years’ ago and has all the attributes necessary to lead this very important business into the future.”

 “Ferdi has been an exemplary leader of MTN Nigeria and has put the business on a sound growth platform for the future,” said Mupita. “He brings significant strategic, financial and operational experience to the new group risk role, where we want to ensure that our enterprise-wide risk management systems are continuously strengthened and remain resilient as we drive our growth strategy.”

MTN Group owns 78,8% of MTN Nigeria, which is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and contributes around a third to the group’s service revenue.

MTN Group is pleased to announce that it has been named the most valuable African brand in the Brand Finance Africa 150 2020 ranking, which ascribes a brand value of US$3,3 billion to MTN.

Brand value is the net economic benefit that a brand owner would achieve by licensing the brand in the open market.

In its survey, Brand Finance said: “Over the last year, Africa’s largest mobile operator has celebrated solid profits and impressive subscriber growth.”

The survey assessed the impact of COVID-19 on the enterprise value of all brands in its survey, compared to their values on 1 January 2020. It categorised the telecoms sector as ‘limited impact’, which it said meant “minimal brand value loss or potential brand value growth”. This was due to the increasingly important role that mobile operators have played in keeping people connected in the time of the pandemic.

In July, Brand Finance named MTN Group the most valuable South African brand, a result of the group’s focus on improving the customer experience for subscribers, as well as uniting 19 000 employees around a shared belief, which is that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life.

MTN Group is pleased to announce the appointment of the new chief executive officer for MTN Liberia Lonestar Cell. Rahul De, the current Chief Marketing Officer of MTN Nigeria, will take the helm at the company on November 1, 2020. Rahul replaces Uche Ofodile who departed Lonestar Cell MTN in July to become the CEO of MTN Benin.

With 23 years of experience in the telco space, ranging across multiple geographies, Rahul has spent the last two decades in senior leadership roles driving growth and leading business transformation.

“I would like to congratulate Rahul on his appointment,” said MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita. “Rahul is a seasoned leader renowned for driving innovative digital and FinTech advancement in our business and in the telecommunications industry.”

Expressing appreciation for Rahul’s commitment and valued service, MTN Nigeria CEO, Ferdi Moolman said, “we thank Rahul for his unwavering dedication and commitment to ensuring that MTN Nigeria remains the market leader in our industry; and congratulate him on his new role. I know that he will continue to shine bright as he moves on from our immediate Y’ello family.”

During this tenure at MTN Nigeria, Rahul spearheaded the team that is driving digital transformation in the country, from a voice and data centric organisation to one which drives a digital and fintech future.

Rahul joined MTN in 2011 as Chief Marketing Officer of MTN Ghana, a position he held for over four years before he joined MTN Nigeria in 2015 as Chief Marketing Officer. He has an MBA in International Business and a bachelor’s degree in Science.

MTN Group and Telecom Infra Project (TIP) have joined forces to support the evolution of MTN’s communication transport infrastructure, which will become a platform for future revenue growth and profitability.

Our partnership with TIP will drive the specific requirements of our network to meet our subscriber demands, setting us apart on our network scalability and adaptability,” says Charles Molapisi, MTN Group Chief Technology and Information Officer.

Through the partnership, communication transport capacity will be deployed to support traffic growth over the next three years. In addition, it will provide support for new services as part of the evolution of 5G and new enterprise services. It will also reduce the time to market through more focused agile service provisioning.

Through the use of open protocols and interfaces, and the ability to incorporate specific innovations focused on the performance of each network component, TIP’s open disaggregated, standard-based transport networks can help MTN move closer to its ideal transport infrastructure,” says David Hutton, TIP’s Chief Engineer.

The TIP community, which aggregates members across the whole transport network value chain, is a key tool for MTN to build its future transport infrastructure.

To achieve the objective of increasing network efficiency, MTN has identified a set of requirements named CASSI that will support its work by:

MTN will work together with the TIP community in the months ahead to build transport products and network configurations addressing the company’s requirements, that could be tested and validated in TIP’s community labs and in the field, to create easy-to-use commercial solutions for the CASSI use cases.