MTN Nigeria reported a profit after tax of N4.1 billion for Q3 2024, which ended in September, despite ongoing economic challenges. However, the operator recorded a significant overall loss of N514.9 billion for the nine-month period, mainly due to substantial foreign exchange (FX) losses, offsetting the Q3 profit.
For the nine-month period, MTN Nigeria posted an adjusted profit after tax of N118.5 billion, reflecting a 59.2 percent decline compared to the previous year. Without the FX losses.
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This adjusted statistic shows that the corporation would have reported a profit during this time if the FX losses had not occurred.
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Impact of Inflation and High Interest Rates
The 77 million-subscriber operator clarified that rising interest rates and inflation have reduced customer purchasing power, which has affected business operations.
Business operations were further impacted, according to the telco, as the naira closed at N1,542/$ in September 2024 as opposed to N907/$ in December 2023.
MTN did point out that the company’s exposure to foreign currency-denominated commitments has decreased as a result of increased foreign exchange market liquidity.
“In the first nine months of 2024, we sustained the growth in our underlying operating performance—underpinned by our resilient business model and operational agility—despite challenging conditions,” said Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria.
Read also: MTN Nigeria calls for tariff hike amid inflation, currency devaluation
Decrease in MTN subscribers due to NIN-SIM verification
Additionally, the research revealed that the introduction of the National Identification Number and Subscriber Identification Module (NIN-SIM) policy resulted in a 0.9 percent drop in total subscribers, reducing the subscriber base down from 78 million to 77 million.
Revenue streams were further impacted when the number of active mobile money (MoMo PSB) wallets decreased by 21.8 percent to 2.8 million.
MTN’s service revenue increased by 33.6 percent to N2.4 trillion in spite of these difficulties, demonstrating the tenacity of its core business operations.
Additionally, the number of active data users increased by 5.1 percent to 45.3 million, indicating a high demand for data services.