Airtel Africa Records $248m Profit After Tax In 9 Months

Airtel Africa Plc has reported a profit after tax of $248 million for the nine months financial period ended December 31, 2024.

The telecom company made this known in its third quarter (Q3) results released on the Nigerian Exchange.

The company said “in Q3, profit after tax benefitted from an exceptional gain of $94 million (net of tax) following the naira and Tanzanian shilling appreciation. However, over the nine-month period ending December 31 2024, profit after tax of $248 million was impacted by $57 million of exceptional derivative and foreign exchange losses (net of tax).”

Revenues stood at $3,638 million and grew by 20.4 per cent in constant currency. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) for the nine-month period declined by 11.9 per cent in reported currency to $1,681 million with EBITDA margins of 46.2 per cent impacted by increased fuel prices and the lower contribution of Nigeria to the Group.

Earnings per share before exceptional items declined from 7.1 cents in the prior period to 6.2 cents. The total customer base grew by 7.9 per cent to 163.1 million. Data customer penetration continues to rise, with a 13.8 per cent increase in data customers to 71.4 million.

Data usage per customer increased by 32.3 per cent to 6.9 GBs, with smartphone penetration increasing by 5.2 per cent to reach 44.2 per cent. The continued investment to increase financial inclusion across our markets contributed to an 18.3 per cent increase in mobile money subscribers to 44.3 million.

Transaction value in Q3 increased by 33.3 per cent in constant currency with annualised transaction value of $146 billion.

The chief executive officer of Airtel Africa, Sunil Taldar said that “we have delivered an improvement in both the operating and financial performance in the last quarter driven by our refined strategy which is focused on delivering great customer experience across all touch points.

“An increasingly important component of this is to provide a best-in-class network, digitise and simplify the customer journey. Our focus on speed and quality execution is enabling us to unlock the substantial opportunities for growth across our markets and business segments, where demand remains significant, resulting in a further acceleration of constant currency revenue growth to 21.3 per cent in the most recent quarter.”

He noted that “we remain committed to investing for the future by expanding our distribution and network to ensure that we capture this significant growth opportunity on offer.”

He further said, “despite the challenging environment for many of our customers, we continue to see strong demand for our services as we enable connectivity and facilitate access to the digital economy.”

He added that the recent signs of currency stabilisation in some markets and the recent decision from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) regarding tariff adjustments in Nigeria are encouraging and signal a more stable and supportive operating environment.