MTN Uganda Announces 17% Profit Increase in Q1 2023

MTN Uganda has reported a profit of Shs 228 billion (17%) after tax for the first quarter of the 2023 financial year.

In a press conference held on Friday, 04 August 2023, MTN Uganda CEO, Sylvia Mulinge, presented the unaudited financial results covering the period ending on June 30th, 2023. The company revealed that its total revenue for Q1 2023 reached Shs 1.267 trillion, a significant increase of 15% compared to Shs 1.094 trillion in the same period of 2022. This robust revenue growth was driven by various segments, with service revenue increasing by 15.0% to Ush 1,250 billion, data revenue growing by 22.1% to Ush 290.2 billion, fintech revenue growing by 18.6% to Ush 358.3 billion, and EBITDA growing by 16.8% to Ush 641.0 billion.

MTN Uganda also experienced positive growth in its subscriber base during the first quarter. The number of mobile subscribers increased by 11.2% to 18.1 million, active data subscribers grew by 21.4% to 6.9 million, and active fintech subscribers increased by 11.6% to 10.9 million.

CEO Sylvia Mulinge acknowledged the challenges presented by heightened inflation during H1 2023, which averaged 8.0%, compared to 4.6% in H1 2022. Despite these uncertain and evolving local and global macroeconomic conditions, MTN Uganda delivered a resilient performance during the first half of 2023.

Chief Finance Officer Andrew Bugembe emphasized the company’s strong recovery in voice and data performance, as well as the positive impact of expense efficiencies that helped mitigate the effects of heightened inflation. This resulted in an earnings expansion of 16.8% and a margin increase of 0.4pp to 50.6%.

Richard Yego, the Managing Director of MTN Mobile Money Uganda Limited, highlighted the increasing customer adoption of mobile money services, supporting solid merchant growth and enabling significant increases in transaction volumes and values.

MTN Uganda’s strategy of increased customer and stakeholder engagement, along with network investments to improve network quality, contributed to the pleasing outcome of a 11.6% increase in the subscriber base to 18.1 million customers.

CEO Mulinge further elaborated on the company’s investments during the period, focusing on additional spectrum acquisition and 4G connectivity acceleration, as well as the grant of spectrum by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) on the 2600Mhz, 2300Mhz, 700MHz, and e-Band, which will enhance future network performance and 5G operationalization.

Due to this positive performance, MTN Uganda has announced the payment of the first interim dividend of Ush 5.6 per share (Ush 125,378,647,738) for the six months ended 30 June 2023, subject to deduction of withholding taxes. The ex-dividend date will be Tuesday, 29 August 2023, in accordance with the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) Trading Rules 2021.