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MTN Uganda, the mobile operator's fourth-biggest market, has posted profit growth of almost a fifth in the six months to end-June, boosted by data and fintech as it helped put smartphones in the hands of more customers in the east African country.
Profit after tax rose 17.8% to 228 billion Ugandan shillings (R1.2 billion) in the period to end-June, it said in an update, with margins picking up and service revenue rising 15% to about R6.5 billion.
Active data subscribers and data revenue both climbed by a fifth, with smartphone penetration rising 3.7 percentage points to 35.7%, the company said.
MTN Uganda, which listed in the country at the end of 2021, has been pushing adoption of smartphones by partnering with manufacturers and enhancing its financing programme to address affordability issues. This includes its "Mpola Mpola" financing scheme, which means "slowly slowly", and requires a deposit as low as about R514. It is also pushing an affordable smartphone, the MTN Kabode Supa, having partnered with Chinese manufacturer Tecno.
READ | Chinese brand Tecno says it is now bigger than Samsung in African smartphone sales
The company said on Friday overall mobile subscribers grew 11.2% to 18.08 million, with fintech subscribers up 11.6% to 10.9 million, while data subscribers grew 21.4% to 6.9 million.
It said it also enjoyed "structurally higher demand" for data services from its enterprise business segment after improving its offering in the SME space. These consolidated efforts have increased data traffic by 53.4% with over two-thirds carried on 4G, it said.
MTN Uganda on Friday declared its first interim dividend, amounting to about R653 million, but it paid final dividends in 2021 and 2022.
Subscriber growth was "pleasing", demonstrating "appreciation of the brand, and this gives us the confidence in our future growth potential", MTN Uganda CEO Sylvia Mulinge said in the results.
"We are encouraged with our performance thus far and the improvements in our macro environment, which should bode well for our performance in the second half of the year," she said.
According to Uganda's central bank, the current monetary policy stance, coupled with decreasing global inflation, is expected to maintain inflation levels around 5% in the third quarter - having averaged 8% in the first half.
