MTN Uganda has announced a profit of Shs228 billion (17%) after tax for the first quarter of the 2023 financial year.
While announcing the unaudited financial results covering the period concluding on June 30th, 2023, MTN Uganda said their total revenue for the first quarter of 2023 was Shs1.267 trillion, compared to Shs1.094,031 trillion of the half quarter of 2022, an increase of 15%. This means Profit After Tax (PAT) increased by 17.8% to Ush 228.0 billion.
Service revenue grew by 15.0% to Ush 1,250 billion, data revenue grew by 22.1% to Ush 290.2 billion, fintech revenue grew by 18.6% to Ush 358.3 billion while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) grew by 16.8% to Ush 641.0 billion.
Mobile subscribers increased by 11.2% to 18.1 million, active data subscribers grew by 21.4% to 6.9 million, while active fintech subscribers increased by 11.6% to 10.9 million.
“During the first half of 2023, we delivered a resilient performance in uncertain and evolving local and global macroeconomic conditions. The heightened inflationary environment during the period had a significant impact on consumers and business operations. Inflation in H1 2023 averaged 8.0%, compared to 4.6% in H1 2022,” MTN Uganda CEO, Sylvia Mulinge said at a press conference on Friday, 04 August 2023.
The company said their revenue growth has been driven by resilient data and mobile money performance, with a strong recovery in voice.
“Our overall revenue growth of 15.8% was in line with our medium-term target, with a resilient performance in voice and a double-digit growth in our data and fintech revenues,” MTN chief finance officer Andrew Bugembe announced at a press release on Friday, 04 August 2023.
“That said, the effects of heightened inflation drove cost pressures upwards, which we mitigated through expense efficiencies. This supported the expansion in our earnings by 16.8% and our margin by 0.4pp to 50.6%,” he added.
Richard Yego, the Managing Director of MTN Mobile Money Uganda Limited, noted that Increasing customer adoption to mobile money has supported solid merchant growth to 267k (+223%) which enabled a 26.3% increase in transaction volumes to 1.6 billion and transaction value growth by 44.4% to Ush 61.6 trillion.
CEO Mulinge said in the first quarter, the company continued to deliver on their business strategy, with a focus on increased customer and stakeholder engagement to drive sustainable and inclusive growth.
“Improving our segmented customer value plans and increased network investment to cement our leading network quality position, has positively stimulated our subscriber base by 11.6% to 18.1 million customers. This pleasing outcome demonstrates the appreciation of the brand, and this gives us the confidence in our future growth potential,” she said.
“Our investment in this period has been focused on additional spectrum acquisition and acceleration of 4G connectivity alongside our fibre to home strategy. We are pleased to report that the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) granted us spectrum on the 2600Mhz, 2300Mhz, 700MHz and e-Band in the period. This will go a long way in enhancing our future network performance and 5G operationalisation, which will augment our growth ambitions. In terms of network rollout, we have added 361 4G sites in the period, boosting 4G population coverage to 83.4% (H122: 67.7%). Our 3G and 2G coverage grew to 92.4% (H122: 91.0%) and 98.4% (H122: 98.0%) respectively,” she explained.
As a result, MTN Uganda has announced payment of the first interim dividend of Ush 5.6 per share (Ush 125,378,647,738) for the six months ended 30 June 2023. This is subject to deduction of withholding taxes. The number of ordinary shares in issue at the date of this declaration is 22,389,044,239.
“In line with the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) Trading Rules 2021, the ex-dividend date will be Tuesday, 29 August 2023. Accordingly, an investor who buys MTN Uganda shares on or before this date will be entitled to the interim dividend. Any investor buying MTN Uganda shares after Tuesday, 29 August 2023 will not be entitled to the interim dividend declared for the period,” the company announced.