MTN Nigeria reports income in trillions

As it continues to see record-breaking revenue growth, MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest telecom provider, has presented its financial report for 2022.

A public firm in Nigeria never had before reported revenues of 2 trillion naira, but that all changed yesterday with the release of MTN Nigeria’s financial report for 2022. The company reported sales of 2.01 trillion naira (a 21.6% rise from 2021) and earnings after tax of 358.88 billion naira (an 18.3% increase from 2021) for the fiscal year ended on December 31, 2022.

MTN’s growth is already remarkable, but when the current macroeconomic conditions in Nigeria are considered, the company’s success is even more remarkable. Nigeria’s inflation rate last year was 21.3% as the naira’s volatility on the currency market increased.

Additionally, the business had to comply with a decision from the Nigerian Communication Commission ordering telecom companies to block the lines of Nigerians who still needed to link their National Identity Numbers (NIN) to their SIM cards. By the conclusion of the first half of 2022, MTN had blocked 10 million users and only activated 2.6 million.

Revenue Increase

Despite the difficulties mentioned above, MTN saw growth across all its business sectors. The company’s primary source of revenue—the voice category—saw a 5% increase in revenue to $864 billion. The data section, which brought in 763 billion, trailed the voice segment by a significant margin. The data segment increased by 38%, following its three-year consistent growth trend.

Data services generated 332 billion in income in 2020; by 2021, that figure had increased to 516 billion naira. At this rate, it is reasonable to expect data revenue to surpass 1 trillion naira in the following year, exceptionally when 5G starts to take off.

SMS service revenue increased by 31% to 63 billion naira. Revenue from roaming services increased to 159 billion, or 14% more than in 2021. Airtime loans and mobile money are examples of value-added services that saw a 16% increase to 81 billion. 

Customer Expansion

The telecom had increased the number of mobile subscribers by 9.7% at the end of the third quarter of 2022, to 74.1 million. To 38.0 million members, there was a 14.6% growth in active data users. With its expanding subscriber base, MTN’s revenue would have achieved its current levels.

Despite only beginning to provide mobile money services through MoMo in May, MTN’s fintech customer base had grown to 11.2 million members, with 1.8 million active MoMo wallets.