MTN Ghana has reported a whopping GHC1.4 billion profit after tax for year 2020, and has therefore declared some 8Gp per share dividend.
The telecoms market leader’s CEO, Selorm Adadevoh announced this at the ongoing third annual general meeting (AGM) being held virtually on Tuesday, May 25, 2021.
This means MTN is paying out almost GHC615 million representing 70.49% of its profits in dividends, far higher than the 50% stipulated by Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE).
The third AGM, which is the first to be held virtually, is being attended by shareholders and their proxies via http://mtnghagm.com and on Microsoft Teams.
Selorm Adadevoh noted that year 2020 was a challenging year for all businesses due to the outbreak of Covid-19, but MTN focused on supporting its people, customers and government through various interventions that eventually paid off.
He said the initiative to tackle the Covid-19 impact was dubbed “Yello Hope”, under which health and safety of staff was paramount as reflected in comprehensive measures put in place to facilitate remote work while ensuring workers delivered on targets.
According to him, MTN also had a daily life monitoring program in place to ensure that workers who needed any special help got it.
“For our customers we collaborated with Bank of Ghana to provide free person to person mobile money transfers of up to GHC100 a day and that that saved customers up to GHC94 million in transfer fees,” he said.
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The MTN Ghana CEO said the measure also prevented face to face interaction and deepened financial inclusion, adding that the free transfer offer has been extended until further notice.
Selorm Adadevoh also recalled that MTN also provided free access to over 200 education sites, which is benefiting between four to five million students and teachers at various levels of education, plus MTN also gave more scholarships under its Bright Scholars initiative.
To government, he said MTN zero rated visits to several government sites where individuals could access health and other vital information, plus it donated GHC5million worth of PPEs and other vital equipment to government for the benefit of frontline health workers.
“We also donated 87,000 boxes of face masks to 31 health facilities and there is more support ongoing via the US$25 million the MTN Group has offered to the African Union for the Covid-19 fight,” he said.
In total, MTN invested a whopping GHC139 million in the fight against COVID-19 in Ghana alone.
Performance
Selorm Adadevoh said, in spite of the devastating impact of Covid-19, MTN chalked some impressive successes comprising of 4.6 million new customers in 2020 taking the total subscriber base to 24.4 million.
Over the period, MTN also saw some 2.6 million increase in data customers, and 1.5 million increase in mobile money customers, take the total of mobile money customers to 10.6 million.
All that led to an impressive 16.4 per cent growth in service revenue over the period, following an whopping GHC1.5 billion capital expenditure in network capacity improvement.
He said, in line with the company’s vision to become a data operator by 2023, it saw a clear growth in data and mobile money contributions to service revenue, while voice contribution to service revenue declined.
According to him, shift in consumer behaviour due to Covid-19 also led to a whopping 328% surge on MyMTN and Ayoba usage, particularly for gaming and other digital purposes.
Meanwhile, the GSE recently reported that MTN stock is the single most value stock on the bourse, chalking some 86% in volume of trade and 77% in value of trade in the first quarter of this year alone.
Per the actual figures available to Techgh24, trade volumes on GSE over the period was 256,053,128, out of which MTN stocks commanded a whopping 220,114,42, while the total value of trade over the period stood at GHS222.6 million, with MTN stocks alone accounting for close to GHS171. 7 million.
MTN Ghana was also recently listed among the top 10 biggest companies in West Africa per market capitalization by African Financial. The company number seven on the list with market capitalization of US$1.806 billion.
The report also said MTN Ghana posted a dividend yield of 9.4 per cent and a 41.8 percent return on equity (ROE) over the last 12 months.
Localization
Meanwhile, by law MTN was supposed to have localized the company by at least 35% by now after the initial public offer. But Selorm Adadevoh said the figure now stands at 16.4 per cent and they are working on reaching 25 per cent by close of this year.
MTN Ghana is to telecoms market leader in the country, commanding over 57% total market share and more than 72% data market share.
