MTN Plans To Sell Shares In Nigeria Operation Through Public Offer

MTN Group announced on Thursday its plans to proceed with a public offer to sell up to 575 million shares in its Nigeria business by way of a bookbuild to institutional investors and fixed price to retail investors.

The company said the offer is anticipated to open in November 2021 with a bookbuild to institutional investors, after which a fixed price is expected to be announced for retail investors also in November 2021.

MTN added that the offer is expected to close in December 2021.

“This is the first step in our previously communicated statement of intent to sell down 14% of MTN Group’s current shareholding in MTN Nigeria,” the company said.

“We are also announcing a public offer of just under 3% of shares in MTN Nigeria as part of the statement of intent communicated previously to further localise 14% of the Group’s holding in MTN Nigeria over the medium term,” said Ralph Mupita, MTN Group CEO.

MTN Nigeria delivered another strong performance in the period, notwithstanding a decline in subscribers due to the ongoing implementation of SIM registration regulations.

MTN Nigeria voice revenue grew by 10.2%  year-on-year due to continued growth (9.6% year-n-year) in minutes of use by subscribers and the success of customer value management (CVM) initiatives, offsetting the impact of the decline in our subscriber
base.

The Nigerian operation’s Data revenue rose by 51.3% year-on-year, maintaining an accelerated growth trajectory in Q3 on increased data conversions from the existing base, underpinned by aggressive expansion of 4G site rollout and enhanced
network capacity to support increasing data traffic.

Average MB per user rose by 58.2% year-on-year, enabling overall data traffic growth of 85.5% year-on-year.

Also, smartphone penetration on the network increased by 3.5pp to 48.7%.

MTN Nigeria’s 4G network now covers 69.2% of the population, up from 60.1% in December 2020.

MTN Nigeria’s FinTech revenue grew by 54.7% as customers continued to increase their use of Xtratime and broader fintech services.

The MoMo agent network continued to grow with the addition of over 234 000 registered
agents in the nine months, bringing the total number to approximately 630 000.

As a result, transaction volume in the nine months rose by more than three times to 93.3 million, led by an active subscriber base of 6.6 million, up 97.2% YoY.

“While we await the outcome of our payment service bank (PSB) licence application,
we continue to expand our MoMo operations and explore other verticals to scale our fintech ecosystem,” said Mupita.