MTN is looking to put more smartphones into the hands of its customers in Uganda as a way to push up revenue from that country, particularly in growing segments such as mobile data.
“We will continue to invest in our network to support the ongoing growth in demand for our data services and deepen our partnerships with various mobile device companies to fast-track our smartphone usage,” said MTN Uganda CEO Sylvia Mulinge as the company reported full-year earnings on Monday.
Like many African countries, Uganda is trying to increase the number of smart devices in the country as a way to increase internet usage. The continent is well known for having leapfrogged the fixed-line era with cellphones driving communications on the continent. More smartphone use also means mobile operators can grow revenue from internet access and mobile data.
According to the GSMA, overall mobile connections in Uganda comprised about 58% of the East African country's population in January 2022. Currently about 35% of MTN’s customer base has smartphones in the country, hence an effort to increase adoption.
“We are also engaged with authorities on the reduction of taxes charged on smartphone devices to increase smartphone affordability and access,” said Mulinge.
The company reported that service revenue grew 11.1% to 2.26-trillion Uganda shillings, about R11bn, for the 12-months to December 2022. After-tax profit increased 19.3% to 406.1-billion shillings. Data revenue grew 24% to 511.3-billion shillings.
Active data subscribers rose 26.6% to 6.7-million, lifting earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (ebitda) 11.5% to 1.18-trillion shillings.
“Our improved data performance and revamped device financing programme has further attracted an additional 1.4-million data customers to our network,” Mulinge said, explaining that this helped to push penetration up 4.2 percentage point from 30.8% in the prior year.
Overall, subscribers rose 9.2% to 17.2-million for the period, while active fintech subscribers increased 10.6% to 11-million.
Capital expenditure, excluding right-of-use assets, rose 22.5% to 331-billion shillings, rolling out an additional 475 base stations, bringing the total number of sites to 3,067.
The Uganda unit declared a dividend of 15.9 shillings per share, up 6.1%.
Last week, parent company MTN Group flagged a profit rise of as much as 45% for the full year.
Headline earnings per share — which strips out one-off and exceptional items — are forecast to increase by 12% to 22% year on year to between 1,105c and 1,204c.
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