MTN Reports Rises in Digital and Fintech Revenue

MTN said its instant messaging platform ayoba now has 25 million monthly active users, about four years after it was first launched. That is up from 20 million monthly active users in December 2022. MTN said ayoba's key territories are Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda and The Republic of Congo.

MTN reported a 15% increase in group service revenue (on a constant currency basis) for the first quarter of 2023 to 52.8 South African rand (2.9 billion US dollars). Data revenue rose 28% and fintech (mobile money,  insurance, airtime lending and e-commerce) revenue by 18%. MTN said active mobile money users climbed 5% to 61.7 million, while data traffic increased by 19.3% to 3,221 PB. Fintech transaction volumes increased by 39% to 4.1 billion, with transaction value up by 65% to 65.7 billion US dollars.

MTN said it suffered 90 days of load-shedding (power cuts) during the first quarter in South Africa, compared to 14 in the same quarter of 2022, which heavily disrupted network availability. In this context, MTN SA "achieved relatively resilient service revenue growth of 1.3%, with voice (down 16%) being the key drag on overall performance." In response, MTN SA teams upgraded additional cell sites with batteries and started piloting solar solutions on a limited number of sites, as well as deploying additional security solutions where there is high risk of theft or vandalism. 

In Nigeria, digital revenue grew by 43%, as the active user base rose by 58% to 11.7 million, led by  ayoba, which added over 1.5 million users and ended the quarter with approximately 6.7 million active users. 

MTN said the Iran Internet Group, of which it owns 29.5%, continued its strong performance in 2023, with ride-hailing app Snapp ranking among the top ride-hailing apps globally and reaching 4.3 million daily rides. Last-mile delivery service Snappbox generated almost 350,000 daily orders, while food delivery app Snappfood grew revenue by 77%. Within Middle East Internet Holding (MTN owns 50%), ride-hailing service Jeeny continued its strong growth with almost 10,000 daily rides, MTN added. Source: MTN report