MTN Ghana recorded a profit after tax of GHC1.4 billion in 2020, representing a 38.4% increase year on year, Selorm Adadevoh, the chief executive officer of MTN Ghana, has said.
It declared a dividend of eight pesewas per share.
Adadevoh said the performance was reflective of the company’s diversified business model, consistent growth of service revenue, and prudent management of costs and risks in an uncertain era and competitive business environment.
Speaking at the company’s annual general meeting in Accra, Adadevoh said service revenue grew by 16.4% year on year to GHC5.99 billion, made up of 41.4% voice, 29.6% data, 21.2% Mobile Money (MoMo) service and 3.1% digital revenue.
He said voice revenue grew by 8.1% to GHC2.50 billion, with a subscriber net addition of 4.6 million, while data revenue increased by 21.3% to GHC1.77 billion with a net addition of 2.7 million subscribers.
More MoMo
MoMo revenue continued its strong growth trajectory, growing by 32.3% to GHC1.27 billion, with subscriber net adds of 1.5 million, but digital reported a 6.2% decline in revenue to GHC0.19 billion because of the implementation of the International Financial Reporting Standard-15.
Adadevoh said the company would continue to invest in supporting significant improvement in coverage expansion, maintenance of the network, customer experience and quality of service with the accelerated need for digitisation.
“As part of this, we rolled out 200 2G, 200 3G and 950 4G sites, which helped relieve the pressure on our infrastructure and significantly enhance our network resilience and service delivery across the nation,” he said.
On the regulatory front, Adadevoh said MTN Ghana would continue to maintain high ethical standards and commitment to its regulatory obligations and remain focused on providing the enabling technology to support Ghana’s digital economy.
He said the company through the MTN Foundation would continue to invest in community development, adding that since inception, the foundation had invested in 87 education projects, 52 health projects and 13 economic empowerment projects, at a cost of GHC53.3 million.
On share price performance and capitalisation, Ishmael Yamson, the chairman of MTN Ghana, said the MTN Ghana share price experienced great volatility, with a year high of GHC0.70 and a low of GHC0.55.
“The year opened at GHC0.70 and we closed the year at GHC0.64, losing 8.57%. This was as a result of factors, including COVID-19’s impact on liquidity, general investor sentiment and sell-downs from some of our large institutional investors.”
Unlocking value
Yamson was confident of the company’s strategy to unlock shareholder value and remained optimistic that the share price would move positively to reflect its continued progress in the coming years.
He said the company continues to be the third-largest listed company by market capitalisation of GHC7.9 billion as of the close of 2020, and stressed that implementing an efficient corporate governance strategy was essential to achieving long-term success.
Yamson said the company continued its contribution to national fiscal development through taxes in 2020 and that, GHC2.6 billion was paid to the government in taxes and represented about 6% of total national tax revenue.
“Within this, GHC101 million and GHC389 million were paid as National Fiscal Stabilisation Levy and Communications Service Tax, which represents about 21% and 70% of overall taxes received respectively,” he said.
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