MTN SA service revenue grew by 3.5% in the third quarter to end-September 2022, impacted by loadshedding and concessions to support the Cell C recapitalisation.
Service revenue in the prepaid consumer business unit (CBU) grew by 0.4%, with postpaid CBU increasing by 4.2%.
The enterprise business unit (EBU) continues to deliver strong double-digit growth of 19.7%.
Furthermore, the wholesale business delivered 0.7% growth despite revenue concessions amounting to R82 million on the Cell C national roaming agreement geared to enabling the conclusion of their recapitalisation.
In the nine months to September 2022, MTN SA grew its subscriber base by over 800 000 to 35.9 million, an increase of 8.1% YoY.
“This was driven by higher gross additions and improved customer value proposition
fostering customer retention. Demand for integrated voice and data-centric plans led to postpaid subscriber numbers expanding by 10.4% to 8 million. Prepaid subscribers increased by 7.5% to 27.9 million.”
Restrictions on electricity supply are anticipated to remain challenging, affecting MTN SA’s Q4 service revenue outlook.
“To mitigate against these negative impacts and to ensure the quality of customer connectivity, MTN SA is well-progressed in rolling out a comprehensive network resilience plan, which includes additional batteries, generators and enhanced security at sites,” said MTN.
Data growth
Data continued to lead the business, contributing 45.4% to MTN SA’s total service revenue. Mobile data revenue grew by 13.3% year-on-year, with growth of 11.2% tyear-on-year for Q3, on the back of a 36.4% increase in data traffic and a 11.7% increase in active data users to 18.8 million.
MTN SA continued the work to make data more accessible and affordable, reducing the effective data tariff by 23.4% year-on-year.
“This has helped to stimulate higher usage. An active prepaid data subscriber now consumes an average of 2.7GB a month, up 9.0% year-on-year. An active postpaid data subscriber uses nearly 13.5GB per month, an increase of 20.9%.”
FinTech business
The performance of the FinTech business was encouraging, with approximately 5.4 million registered MoMo users and 1.1 million monthly active users by 30 September 2022, representing growth of 136%.
“We continue to grow the business by providing a mix of innovative and relevant digital and financial solutions including payments at 27 000 retail points, utilities’ payments, gaming as well as digital services.”
Furthermore, there has been an increase in app adoption resulting in 2.5 million downloads in the nine months to September 2022.