MTN Nigeria Thursday announced that despite all challenges, the company posted strong financial report in the first quarter of 2018, even as it increased subscriber base by 4.3 million to peak at 54 million subscribers at the end of March 2018.
Break down on the subscriber surge showed net additions of 2.3 million at the end of Q1 2018 and 2.0 million net additions in Q4 2017. The company said the achievement happened mainly as a result the increase in its SIM registration footprint.
Another factor that contributed to the increase was the roll out of 298 3G and 174 4G sites with the 4G rollout remaining centred on the top 10 cities across the country.
The telco also said it recorded 15.2% growth in voice revenue, increased constant currency service revenue by 14.4 percent and data revenue by 73.2% year-on-year.
CEO of MTN Nigeria, Ferdi Moolman, said this was in continuation of the positive momentum of 2017 and expressed satisfaction the achievement in the first quarter of 2018 happened as the EBITDA margin expanded to 41,8% given well controlled expenses and a stable naira.
According to him, “MTN Nigeria delivered a strong performance for the first quarter of 2018, supported by growth in data revenue and increased scale. We also maintained positive momentum in growing our subscriber base and maintaining our network leadership position.”
Meanwhile the parent company, MTN group also recorded voice revenue growth of 5.4% and said it was caused by a strong growth in Nigeria and Ghana of 15.2% and 20.6% respectively. The group’s subscriber base, increased by 1.9 percent quarter-on-quarter with net additions of 4.1 million and data revenue up by 26.9 percent.
MTN Group President and CEO, Rob Shuter said: “During the quarter, the group continued to focus on operational execution across our markets, leveraging off the strong network investment of the past few years.
This allowed us to deliver an acceleration in service revenue growth to 9,1% (constant currency), led by MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana.”
