Bouyed by its Nigerian operation, telecommunications group, Airtel Africa, posted $3.4 billion revenue for the nine-month ended December 31, 2021. According to the unaudited financial results released by the Group yesterday, this showed that Airtel revenue jumped by 22.5 per cent compared with $2.8 billion recorded in the same period of the previous financial year.
Airtel Nigeria, which is one of the 14 operations of the telecommunications group accounted for 39 per cent of the group’s earnings, as its revenue for the nine-month jumped to $1.37 billion from $1.13 billion recorded in the previous year. This represents a 21.3 per cent growth in the company’s revenue.
Commenting on the result, the chief executive officer of AirtelAfrica, SegunOgunsanya, said: “A strong third quarter has contributed to a pleasing nine-month financial performance across all key metrics. Operationally we have continued to execute on our network and distribution expansion plans, driving continued strong growth in ARPUs across voice, data and mobile money.”
“We have also seen further improvement in our customer growth trends for the Group with Nigeria returning to strong customer growth after a period affected by the implementation of new ‘know your customer’ requirements, posting 1.9 million net additions in the third quarter, taking total Group customer additions to 3.1 million,” he added.
Ogunsanya said he was particularly pleased with developments in Nigeria, where in November the telecoms operator received approval in principle for both a payment service bank (mobile money) licence and a super-agent licence.
“We are now working closely with the Central Bank to meet all its conditions to receive the final operating licences and commence operations. This will enable us to expand our digital financial products and reach the millions of Nigerians that do not have access to traditional financial services. We continued to strengthen our balance sheet, with our leverage ratio now 1.4 times underlying EBITDA, thanks both to continued increases in operating cash flow delivery and to over $550m of cash that has now been received from minority investments into our mobile money business,” he said.
“We will continue to invest in expanding and evolving our platform to further deepen both financial and digital inclusion across Africa. I continue to see huge growth potential across voice, data and mobile money and our strategy is delivering against this opportunity. Our sustained investments in both network and distribution expansion will help to ensure that both the communities and economies across our footprint will continue to benefit from increased and affordable connectivity and financial inclusion. We are committed to continue to improve the delivery of our services to our customers, with sustainability at the heart of our continued purpose to transform lives across Africa,” Ogunsanya stated.
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