MTN Ghana grows

MTN’s business in Ghana managed to grow revenue by a third in the year to end-December as the economic downturn hit consumers and regulations pulled subscriber numbers down.

“The macroeconomic outlook for Ghana in 2024 is expected to remain challenging due to inflation and currency risks, which could potentially affect economic growth and living costs for Ghanaians in the short term,” said MTN Ghana CEO Selorm Adadevoh.

“The government has announced plans to tackle the economic challenges through the implementation of fiscal and monetary policies, including receiving funds from the IMF.”

Ghana’s inflation in 2023 averaged 40.3% a month versus 31.5% in 2022. Inflation ended easier at 23.2% in December against 54.1% a year earlier. Then there were higher utility costs and the Ghananian cedi weakening 38.5% against the US dollar, said the mobile operator.

But MTN’s third-largest operation managed to grow service revenue 34.6% to 13.3-billion cedis (R20.2bn). Profit after tax leapt 39.4% to just less than 4-billion cedis, driven mainly by growth in voice, mobile data and fintech services.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) rose 40.2% to 7.8billion cedis, with capital expenditure at 4.1-billion cedis.

MTN was hit in the past year by implementation of a 1.5% levy on mobile money transfers from May last year, despite a continued rise in users. The country’s finance ministry reduced the levy to 1% from January.

MTN narrowly escaped a R13bn tax bill in Ghana in early 2023. With state finances in disarray, some thought this a shakedown by a hard-up government. MTN’s Ghana operation had to deactivate about a quarter of its network’s SIM cards to comply with a directive on biometric registration.

Since then, 600,000 SIMs were reregistered, bringing the number of outstanding disconnected SIMs to 4.8-million at end-September.

As a result, MTN Ghana’s mobile subscriber base decreased 6.3% to 26.8-million. Active mobile money users increased 20.1% to 15.2-million and active data subscribers 14% to 15.4-million.

Adadevoh, who has been with the business for more than five-and-a-half years, will be stepping down as CEO at the end of March. From April, Adadevoh will take up a new role as group chief commercial officer for MTN.

MTN veteran Stephen Blewett is set to replace Adadevoh as CEO.