Airtel Africa Plc recorded strong performance across key performance indicators in its third quarter as Nigeria, its largest market, paced up ahead of others to sustain impressive group performance.
Airtel Africa has presence in 14 countries in Africa, primarily in East Africa and Central and West Africa.
Key extracts of the nine-month results for the period ended December 31, 2021 showed that Airtel Africa’s net profit after tax rose from $261 million in December 2020 to $514 million in December 2021. Group revenue grew by 22.5 per cent from $2.85 billion to $3.49 billion. Operating profit increased by 43.1 per cent from $800 million to $1.15 billion. Profit before tax jumped by 79.4 per cent from $482 million in December 2020 to $864 million in December 2021.
Top-line analysis indicated that voice revenue grew by 13.6 per cent from $1.54 billion to $1.75 billion. Data revenue rode on the back of increased data users to $1.13 billion in December 2021, 33.9 per cent on $842 million posted in December 2020. Mobile money revenue also grew by 39.6 per cent from $291 million to $406 million. Other revenues increased by 19.9 per cent from $255 million to $306 million.
The underlying customer base showed that the group continued to expand across its businesses. Total customer base rose by 5.8 per cent from 118.9 million users to 125.8 million users. Data users grew by 11.1 per cent from 40.6 million to 45.1 million while mobile money users increased by 19.6 per cent from 21.5 million to 25.7 million users.
A breakdown showed that Nigeria, Airtel Africa’s largest market, outperformed the group with Nigeria’s revenue rising by 21.5 per cent from $1.13 billion to $1.37 billion. Operating profit increased by 30.4 per cent from $431 million to $562 million. Total customer base in Nigeria however dipped marginally by 4.7 per cent from 44.4 million to 42.4 million. Nigeria’s data customer base meanwhile increased slightly by 0.7 per cent from 18.8 million to 19.0 million users. Nigeria’s customer base was affected by the National Identity Number (NIN)/SIM regulations in Nigeria.
Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Africa Plc, Segun Ogunsanya, said a strong third quarter performance contributed to the 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.
“I am particularly pleased with developments in Nigeria, where in November we 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.
“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,” Osunsanya said.