MTN Group has announced an encouraging set of results for the six months ended 30 June 2019 in the context of difficult trading conditions across its major markets.
Commenting on the results, Rob Shuter, MTN Group President and CEO, said:
“We had a good first half, reporting solid financial results, good commercial momentum and encouraging strategic progress. We saw growth of 12% in adjusted headline earnings per share, which is the first time that we have delivered growth in this measure in recent years. Our service revenue grew just below 10% and EBITDA just above 10%, both on a constant currency basis. Our holding company leverage remains stable at 2.3x, well within our guidance range of 2 to 2.5x. And, as we grew revenue and carefully managed our investment programme, we saw capex intensity drop further, to 16.9%.
Commercially, we had strong subscriber growth of 7.7 million in the first six months of the year to reach a total of 240 million subscribers. The number of active data users grew by 3.5 million to 82 million and our 30-day active Mobile Money users grew by 2.4 million to 30 million. Our continued focus on the customer experience has seen us record brand NPSˆ leadership across more than 50% of the portfolio, with 12 markets now leading. That contributed to MTN being named the most valuable South African brand in the Brand Finance South Africa 50 report and the most admired African brand by Brand Africa 100.
