MTN group president and CEO Rob Shuter will step down from his role at the end of his fixed four-year contract in March 2021.

The group made the announcement today (11 March 2020) in its financial report for the year ended 31 December 2019.

For the year, subscribers increased by 18,2-million to 251-million.

Revenue grew by 9,7% and service revenue grew by 9,8%.

IFRS-reported EBITDA margin improved by 6,4 percentage points (pp) to 42,3% (up 1,2 pp to 35,5%), while IFRS-reported EBITDA (before once-off items) increased by 34,3% (up 13,65).

IFRS-reported group HEPS was 468 cps, up 38,9% (up 61,7% under IAS 17).

Non-operational impacts (including IFRS 16 adoption) lowered HEPS by 209 cps.

A final dividend of 355 cents per share was declared.

Shuter comments: “In 2019, the 25-year anniversary of MTN Group, we delivered solid operational execution and commercial momentum across most of our operations as well as a number of innovations that support greater digital and financial inclusion.

“In challenging trading conditions, we maintained operating leverage with a 9,8% increase in service revenue and a 13,6% increase in EBITDA. The group’s EBITDA margin improved by 1,2 percentage points to 35,5% on an IAS 17 basis, in line with our medium-term guidance. Our holding company leverage remained stable at 2,2times and we reduced our capex intensity to 17,5%, from 19,3%, also on an IAS 17 basis.

“The group’s results were supported by double-digit growth in service revenue by both MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana, while economic pressure, new data usage rules and a reassessment of recognition criteria for roaming revenue from Cell C impacted our performance in South Africa,” he adds.

“We advanced our work to build a digital operator, adding 18,2-million subscribers to reach a total base of 251-million, and recording 95-million active data users and 35-million active MoMo users. This growth is central to our belief that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life. In support of this, we launched a $20 smartphone during the year, following on from our $20 smart feature phone developed in 2018.”

Shuter says that, to ensure Africa doesn’t miss out on the instant messaging revolution, MTN launched its own instant messaging platform, Ayoba, in March 2019. It is now live in 12 markets and has registered 2-million monthly active users.

“Broadening our fintech offering remains a priority, and MoMo is now live in South Africa. In Nigeria, we received our super-agent licence and by December 2019 had 108 000 registered agents.”

MTN delivered about R14-billion of asset realisations within the first 12 months of its three-year R15-billion asset realisation programme.

“We moved towards more localisation of operations, most notably with the listing of MTN Nigeria, and recorded progress on various regulatory issues, including the AGF matter on taxes in Nigeria,” says Shuter. “Relationships with stakeholders across our markets improved, and we reported our highest employee engagement score yet.”

He adds that MTN has enhanced its medium-term guidance framework given the progress and momentum it is seeing in its commercial, financial and strategic initiatives. “While we maintain our medium-term service revenue, EBITDA, capex and ROE objectives, we are increasing our medium-term (three-to-five years) targets for our asset realisation programme to at least a further R25-billion and are reducing our holding company leverage target ratio to below 2-times.”