MTN Nigeria Communications Plc reported an impressive 42.5% increase in its Q1 2021 profit after tax, it still had a few issues to worry about. Said worries stemmed from the dramatic declines in the telcoâs mobile subscribers and active data users, as you shall see shortly.
An Overview of MTN Nigeriaâs Q1 2021 Financials
Chief Executive Officer, Karl Toriola, wasnât wrong when he commented on the companyâs Q1 financial performance saying: âWe made good progress in the first quarter of 2021 despite the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.â This is because total revenue for the period increased significantly by 17.2% to N385.1 billion, up from N328.5 billion during the comparable period last year. Similarly, profit after tax surged by 42.5% to N73.7 billion when compared to N51.7 billion in Q1 2020.
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’Femi Asu and Temiloluwa O’Peters
Published 4 May 2021
Published 4 May 2021
MTN Nigeria Communications Plc has reported a profit after tax of N73.75bn for the first quarter of 2021, up 42.35 percent from N51.74bn in the same quarter of last year.
The telecommunications company said its profit before tax rose to N102.99bn in Q1 2021 from N76.91bn in the same period last year.
Its revenue increased by 17.06 per cent to N385.32bn from N329.17bn, according to its unaudited financial statements.
The telco said its mobile subscribers declined by five million to 71.5 million in the first quarter of 2021 due to the effects of customer churn and the regulatory restrictions on new SIM sales and activations.
MTN sheds 5 million customers in Nigeria
MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola
Lagos-listed MTN Nigeria Communications shed five million mobile subscribers in the first three months of the year as it struggled with customer churn and restrictions on Sim card sales and activations.
JSE-listed MTN Group, which owns Nigeria’s largest telecommunications operator, on Monday said there was also a slight slippage in data customers at the unit, with active subscribers down by 71 000 to 32.5 million.
Despite this, service revenue climbed by 17.2% to ₦385.2-billion and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) climbed by 19.1% to ₦204.5-billion. Ebitda margin climbed by 0.9 percentage points to 53.1%. Earnings per share rose by 42.5% while profit before tax was up 33.9%.
MTN Nigeria Communications Plc, yesterday, released its unaudited results for the quarter ended 31 March 2021.
According to the report of the results, its mobile subscribers declined by 5 million to 71.5 million due to the effects of customer churn and the regulatory restrictions on new SIM sales and activations.
The telelecoms company’s active data users also declined marginally by 71,000 to 32.5 million.
However, its service revenue increased by 17.2 per cent to N385.2 billion, while
Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, and Amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 19.1 per cent to N204.5 billion.
EBITDA margin increased by 0.9 percentage points to 53.1 per cent. Capital expenditure was up by 19.3 per cent to N89.9 billion, up 27.8 per cent to N31.6 billion excluding right of use (RoU) assets.
Nigerians speak out against new SIM card registration policy 01:28 (CNN)Doctors in Nigeria have criticized a mass national identification registration policy, involving tens of millions of citizens, as Covid-19 cases and deaths rise in the country.
Nigeria which has Africa s largest population has recorded about
half of its more than 140,000 cases in the last 10 weeks, according to data from John Hopkins University. The number of cases has continued to rise, and it is putting undue pressure on our health facilities, Mukhtar Muhammad, the national incident manager of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on Covid-19, told CNN. If we are not able to control the number of cases or provide more facilities, I am afraid certainly it is only a matter of time before the system becomes overwhelmed.