(Photo Credit: Wiki Village)
After several quarters of disappointing earnings, MTN seems to be dialling the correct numbers in its local operation, adding 668 000 new customers in the first three months of the year for a new total of 30.2 million.
The mobile phone operator announced on Thursday that its South African operation added 132 000 new post-paid users in the third quarter to end-March 2018.
It attributed this growth to continued improvement in the consumer segment.
The company also added 536 000 new prepaid subscribers in South Africa.
“While our enterprise business remains challenged, we now have the leadership team in place, and are executing on a turnaround plan focused on improving customer retention and acquisition,” the company informed investors on Thursday.
The mobile phone operator continues to improve its network and in the third quarter invested R1.7 billion in capex.
While, MTN Group added 4, 1 million new customers in the third quarter, pushing its total customers to 221, 3 million people in 22 countries across Africa and the Middle East.
The company also increased its active mobile money users by 3, 9% quarter on quarter to 22, 7 million.
It also increased service revenue by 9, 1% and group data revenue rose by 26, 9%.
“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,” MTN Group CEO, Rob Shuter, said.
“This allowed us to deliver an acceleration in service revenue growth to 9, 1% (constant currency), led by MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana.”
The group-wide network investment enhanced data quality in metro areas. In both South Africa and Nigeria, MTN maintained network leadership, the company said.
In Nigeria and Ghana, MTN said it made good progress on the IPO processes, which it aim to conclude during 2018.
“To this end, we will be releasing full financial results for MTN Nigeria on 7 May 2018. On 20 April 2018, we received all required regulatory approvals to proceed with the IPO in Ghana, which we expect to launch in late May 2018.”
