Karl Toriola, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Communications Nigeria Limited has explained how the telecoms giant recoded 22% growth in its service revenue in the first quarter of the year 2022.
Earlier, we reported the release of the unaudited Q1 financial report of the telecoms operator to the public through a regulatory filing at the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), where it publicly quoted.
According to the report, MTN Nigeria recorded a solid Q1 2022 performance, tracking positively against its medium-term targets with 22% growth to hit N470 billion from N385.11 billion last year in service revenue and the expansion of EBITDA margins.
Commenting on the report on behalf of the MTN Board, Toriola, the CEO, said the impressive revenue was delivered through solid commercial momentum and the ongoing execution of MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy despite challenging trading conditions.
The revenue, he noted, came from five streams including voice, data, fintech, digital services and enterprise business.
Voice Revenue
In a year-on-year contrast, Voice revenue grew by 5.8% to N258.77 billion in Q1 2022 from N244.62 billion in the comparative period of 2021, boosted by increased gross connections and higher usage from its active subscribers Identification Module (SIM) base which stood at 70.2 million.
“This was enabled by our expanded customer acquisition touchpoints and rural telephony initiatives, as well as our enhanced customer value management (CVM) toolkit, which reduced the impact of the SIM registration and activation restrictions,” Toriola said.
Data Revenue
Similarly, MTN posted 54% growth in data revenue, maintaining the accelerated growth trajectory through growth in subscriber base and data usage.
According to the MTN CEO, this was sustained by an aggressive 4G network expansion and enhanced quality and capacity of our network to support rising data traffic, adding that data traffic rose by 84.8% YoY and usage (MB per user) soared by 69.8%.
He said, “In addition, we added about a million new smartphones to our network in Q1, bringing smartphone penetration to 50%. As a result, our 4G network now covers 71.7% of the population, up from 70.3% in December 2021.
“We continue to drive home broadband penetration, reaching over 775,000 users, up by over 160,000 in Q1. Our goal is to Own the Home through differentiated value propositions, creating experiences that position MTN as the broadband service provider of choice. We are leveraging our unique assets and capabilities to capture a significant share of market growth.”
Fintech revenue
The MTN report show that its fintech revenue rose by 46.5% on the back of the growing adoption of its fintech services and expanded user base.
Its active fintech subscribers rose by 6.2 million to 10.7 million YoY. This came after additional 1.3 million subscribers joined the service in Q1 2022 as relative to Q4 2021.
“We continue to expand our MoMo agent network with more than 800,000 registered agents and over 166,000 active agents who perform a minimum of ten revenue-generating transactions within 30 days,” he said.
Having established a significant foundation of registered agent network, he said MTN is now focusing on scaling the active base.
MTN has expanded its agent services to include card withdrawal services by deploying point of sales (POS) terminals to the agent network. This has contributed to growing its total volume of transactions to over 56.1 million, up 132.7% YoY, by more than 10.7 million active users (up 135.2%).
Digital revenue
During the period under review, MTN’s digital revenue grew by 35.3% as penetration of itsdigital products continues to deepen, driven by increased usage from our active base.
According to Mr. Toriola, MTN has reached 7.4 million digital subscriptions, up 164.1% YoY, with ayoba accounting for 45% of the subscriptions and Rich Media accounting for 55%.
“Revenue from digital services was driven by Rich Media, Mobile Advertising and Content VAS. We are transforming our Y’ello Digital Platforms into a onestop destination that caters to all consumer segments,” he said.
enterprise business
Revenue from the enterprise wing of MTN operation rose by 34.3%, underpinned by the onboarding of new customers across segments and the uptake of its enhanced services.
The MTN CEO explained that the enterprise business is transitioning from product to platform while leveraging core mobile and fixed connectivity to serve customers across all segments better.
“We have commenced executing programs to digitise and transform micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria. Key among these is developing a cloud technology marketplace to empower, educate and enrich MSMEs.
“Our goal is to drive further adoption of enterprise platforms (internet of things and cloud), creating additional value for our customers and enabling them to innovate while remaining profitable,” he said.
