MTN Uganda‘s service revenue reached Ush 1.25 trillion, or $335 million, in the first half of 2023. This is the equivalent of the company’s revenue in 2018.
This demonstrates a substantial increase in the company’s growth. The growth of phone, data, and fintech services were the primary contributors to this 15% increase, as stated by the CEO Sylvia Mulinge.
In spite of the fact that inflationary pressures are being applied, she highlighted the fact that this is in accordance with the goals of the business and demonstrates resiliency in performance.
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Voice revenue, which grew by 9.4% to 568 billion Ush, was one of the most important drivers since it was the one that climbed the most. The increase in the number of customers served, from 910,000 to over 18 million, was what made this achievement attainable. MTN was successful in alleviating congestion on its network by migrating customers to its 3G service and increasing the quality of the user experience overall. Other nations, in contrast to Kenya, which has already begun delivering 5G services, continue to struggle with the difficulty of shifting subscribers to more modern networks. Kenya has already begun offering 5G services.
Another factor that contributed was a 22% growth in data income, which totalled 290 billion U.S. dollars. This was because there was a 21% increase in the number of active data users, bringing the total number of users to 6.9 million. The number of people using smartphones climbed by a total of 24 percentage points, reaching a new all-time high of 36 percent of the population. MTN was able to increase the number of customers it had by providing financing options such as TakeNow and selling inexpensive Kaboda smartphones that came packaged with data subscriptions. Given that Mulinge was formerly in charge of consumer business at Lipa Mdogo Mdogo, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that Safaricom has reproduced the success of Lipa Mdogo Mdogo.
Further Increase in Fintech Revenue
There was an 11% increase in the number of persons using fintech, which brought the total number of users to 10.9 million. This led to a 19% increase in income, which brought the total to 358 billion Ugandan Shillings. The growth was mostly driven by monetary transactions, including payments and remittances. The amount of businesses that accept MoMoPay has climbed by 223% and now stands at 267,000. As a consequence of this, the number of transactions rose by 26%, reaching 1.6 billion, while the value of those transactions rose by 45%, reaching 62 trillion U.S. shillings. However, there were 162,000 fewer agents, a 6% decrease from the previous year.
According to Mulinge, attempts to digitise customer value chains through MoMoPay and improve remittances have driven the advanced revenue contribution up 8.8 percentage points to 26.3%, which has enabled the company to fulfil its medium-term goals. This has allowed the company to move forward with its long-term plans.
These numbers highlight the significance of MTN Uganda’s financial technology services to the company’s income.