- Posts 23.3% revenue increase in 2017
- Data revenue increases by 50.6%
- 6.5 million active data subscribers
- Active Mobile Money subscribers hit 7.1 million
In fulfillment of the terms of its 4G licence, MTN Ghana – the largest telecommunications company in the country with 15.7million subscribers – has said it will list on the Ghana Stock Exchange by June to offer local investors a share of the booming business.
The move is under the terms of MTN Ghana’s 4G licence as agreed with government and the regulator, National Communications Authority (NCA).
In its 2017 financial results, the company said a key objective of listing on the GSE is to target a broad base of Ghanaian investors to share in the risks and rewards in ownership of MTN Ghana.
“MTN Ghana is also moving forward with its localisation, and we expect this process to be completed in the first half of 2018.”
As a result, the MTN Group board has approved a public offer through a listing on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), subject to final approval by the GSE and Securities and Exchange Commission in Ghana.
In February, the GSE announced that MTN Ghana had submitted its prospectus to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and GSE to float 35 percent of its shares on the local bourse.
The listing of the mobile giant is expected to improve the GSE Composite Index, which is a major stock market index that tracks the performance of all companies traded on the Ghana Stock Exchange.
The financial report also discloses that: “MTN Nigeria continues to make good progress with the preparations for its listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE)”.
MTN Ghana Financial Position
The report revealed that MTN Ghana continued to benefit from a positive macro-economic environment and closed the year with a subscriber base of 15.7 million following the internal review of subscriber definitions.
This translated into a 24 percent increase in its 2017 performance as the company made GH¢3.4billion cedis.
Focused value propositions and improving NPS supported the good subscriber growth.
Strong growth in revenue, up by 23.3percent, was underpinned by data and digital revenue growth.
Data revenue increased by 50.6 percent, supported by re-pricing that was implemented in the second half.
The business reported active data subscribers of 6.5 million, which saw the digital revenue grow by 37.7 percent, with the number of active MoMo subscribers expanding by 25.7 percent to 7.1 million.
In the year under review, MoMo made up 13.6 percent of revenue.
The company also disclosed that it paid about one billion cedis in taxes to the government of Ghana, representing 3 percent of total tax collected in 2017.
Mergers in telecom Industry
Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana Ebenezer Asante is predicting more mergers among smaller telcos in the country, as he thinks the telecom industry in Ghana is too small for the current number of telcos that operate in it.
“The external partnership you talked about…for me, it is good. It is something that we predicted four years ago. Is that the end of consolidations? Not at all. We will see one or two more”.
He stated that he was not surprised at the merger of Tigo and Airtel, since it had been envisaged long ago.
