MTN Nigeria Communications (MTNN) Plc, in line with its dividend policy, approved an interim dividend of N113.98 billion, representing N5.60 per share to be paid out of distributable net income.
This represents a growth of 23.1 per cent over the N4.55 per share paid in H1, 2021.
It also recorded a 28.1 per cent rise in profit after tax to N181.6 billion in the first half (H1) of the year, ended June 30, 2022.
The company, in its unaudited results for the half-year revealed that, profit after tax grew by 28.1 per cent to N181.6 billion, while earnings per share (EPS) rose by 28.1 per cent to N8.92.
Mobile subscribers for the period under review increased by 7.6 per cent to 74.1 million, added 5.7 million subscribers in H1 2022. Active data users increased by 13.2 per cent to 36.8 million, while active fintech subscribers rose by 87.3 per cent to 11.5 million.
Service revenue increased by 19.9 per cent to N947.9 billion; earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 22.1 per cent to N509.3 billion, while EBITDA margin increased by 0.9 percentage points (pp) to 53.6 per cent.
Speaking on the company’s performance in H1, CEO, MTN Nigeria, Karl Toriola said: “during the first half of 2022, we made good progress in strengthening the resilience of the business in the face of our increasingly challenging operating environment with rising energy, food and general inflation putting pressure on consumer spending.
“The conflict in Ukraine as well as implementation of a ‘zero-COVID’ policy in China, has also put a strain on global supply chains. To mitigate global supply chain and exchange rate risks, we accelerated capital expenditure for network expansion into the H1 2022.”
He explained that, “we deployed capex of N311.6 billion to accelerate the rollout of our 4G network, which now covers 75.3 per cent compared to 65.1 per cent in H1 2021 of the population and accounts for 77.9 per cent of data traffic compared to 67.2 per cent in H1 2021.
“In addition, having acquired one lot of 100MHz in the 3.5GHz spectrum band from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), we are on track to launch 5G services across the country in Q3, 2022.
gies deliver significantly higher speeds and lower latency, potentially unlocking many new use cases for consumers and enterprises while improving network economics.”
He also said: “we achieved some important strategic milestones in H1 towards delivering our Ambition 2025 strategy. This includes the final approval for our MoMo Payment Service Bank (PSB) and the commencement of commercial operations on May 19, 2022, leveraging the solid foundation of our existing MoMo business.”
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