Reflecting on MTN Nigeria’s results for the year ended 31 December 2019, chief executive officer Ferdi Moolman said he is pleased with the company’s performance, underlining the contribution of voice and data revenue, earnings per share rising by 38.8%and the addition of 6.1 million new subscribers.

MTN CEO Rob Shuter (fourth from left) and MTN chairman Mcebisi Jonas (fifth) met Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari (centre) when the telco announced investments in the West African country.

In a statement issued by the company, Moolman reiterated that despite a challenging operating environment, voice revenue growth “remained healthy”, and data revenue continued to accelerate, “supporting a 12.6% increase in service revenue with an acceleration in growth to 14.0% YoY in Q4 2019.”

Voice revenue growth remained healthy at 8.4% and accounted for 72.7% of service revenue. Voice traffic increased by 7.6%, supporting revenue growth.

Moolman pointed to the company’s Q3 focus on coverage and data usage penetration.

“These initiatives include optimising frequencies, expanding our 4G network coverage with over 6,000 additional sites leveraging 800MHz spectrum and repositioning our commercial data offerings. It is pleasing to note that the promising results we reported at the end of Q3 2019 accelerated in the fourth quarter. Corresponding with the increase in our active data subscriber net additions by 2.9 million in Q4 2019, our 4G population coverage rose by 8.4 pp to 43.8%, giving people in 68 additional cities access to 4G.”

He added: “Fintech revenue growth was 23.3%, supported by increased adoption of MTN Xtratime, our airtime lending service. We launched a super-agent service in August and are pleased with the initial rollout and uptake of the service. We closed the year with a network of 108,000 agents registered nationwide.

“The agent network served almost one million customers in the first four months of operation, and we are maintaining our focus on further expansion. Our enterprise business segment continued to deliver solid results, with revenue growth of 20.3%.”

Moolman said the company has progressed in resolving its dispute with the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) on the adequacy of taxes and duties paid.

“We have discontinued the legal action against the AGF following the transfer of the matter to the relevant authorities and look forward to a final resolution. We have always fulfilled our tax obligations and remain committed to maintaining good relationships with all regulatory authorities.”

Recently, market analysts have warned that investors are concerned about the region’s uncertain regulatory environment and that the central bank has not yet granted mobile banking licences to MTN and Airtel.

However, MTN’s ongoing exploits within the mobile money space represents a key opportunity.