MTN Ghana has approved an amount of GHc737.4 million as dividend to its shareholders for the 2019 financial year.
The dividend, which was approved at the just ended maiden virtual Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the company in Accra, represents 73.1% of profit after tax and a 20.0% year-on-year (YoY) increase in dividend per share.
Announcing the dividend payment, the Board Chairman, Ishmael Yamson noted that the Board declared an interim dividend of 2 pesewas per share after reviewing the mid-year performance of the company and after reviewing the full year performance of the company in 2019, the Board further recommended a final dividend of 4 pesewas on ordinary shares bringing the total dividend for the year 2019 to 6 pesewas per share.
The number of ordinary shares in issue at the date of this declaration is 12.3 billion. In compliance with the requirements of Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) rules, implying that all shareholders registered in the books of Scancom PLC at the close of business on Thursday, 30 April 2020 will qualify for the final dividend.
In view of this, the ex-dividend date has been set as Tuesday, 28 April 2020. Consequently, an investor purchasing MTNGH shares before this date will be entitled to the final dividend. However, an investor buying MTNGH shares on or after Tuesday, 28 April 2020 will not be entitled to the final dividend.
On Friday, 28 August 2020 the dividend will be transferred electronically to the bank accounts or Mobile Money wallets of shareholders who make use of these facilities.
MTN Ghana share price opened the year at GH¢0.79 and closed at GH¢0.70, losing 11.4% for the year ended 31 December 2019, with a 52-week high and low of GH¢0.80 and GH¢0.67 respectively. This was largely due to selling pressures from local retail and foreign institutional investors. The selling pressures were as a result of institutional and retail investors reducing their exposure due to bearish sentiments which plagued the market throughout the year and, demands on foreign funds to meet liquidity requests from clients.
Generally, “investors have confidence in MTN albeit the potential risk to realising price gains due to the bearish sentiments in the market” stated Yamson.
Overall, our performance generated a return on equity of 36.0% to our shareholders. This represented a YoY improvement of 4.7 percentage points.
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According to Yamson, “Our priorities in 2019 remained as a key focus on our customers, putting them at the centre of our operations, ensuring robust governance of the business and maintaining high ethical standards. These are critical to achieving sustainable profitable growth and improving long-term shareholder value”.
In 2019, MTN delivered a strong profit after tax growth of 33.6% YoY to GH¢1.01 billion as at December 2019. The increased profitability performance was anchored on strong service revenue growth coupled with successful execution of its cost-efficient strategies. it grew its service revenue by 22.8% YoY, driven by excellent growth in revenues from Voice, Data and MoMo. Voice revenue was up in the double-digits and increased by 19.4% YoY to GH¢2.31 billion and contributed 44.9% of service revenue. Data revenue growth was strong at 32.5% YoY to GH¢1.46 billion and contributed 28.4% of service revenue. MoMo revenue also continued to grow strongly, increasing by 28.0% YoY to GH¢0.96 billion and contributed 18.6% of service revenue.
MTN’s operating costs went down by 3.0% on the back of various cost-efficient initiatives which impacted positively on its cost base and efficiency levels in 2019. The improvement led to a reported Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) growth of 65.7% YoY, with a YoY EBITDA margin expansion of 13.1 percentage points to 50.8%.
During the year under review, MTN Ghana received 66 awards including the prestigious Company of the Year 2018 by GIPC’s Ghana Club 100 Awards. MTN is the only Ghanaian company to win the UK-based Investor in People Accreditation – Gold Employer of the year award. For the past five years, the Ghana Revenue Authority has given the company great compliments and awards for being the largest tax payer in the Large Tax Payer Category in the country. MTN Ghana has over the past five years contributed an average of approximately 3% of the total tax revenue in Ghana. Other industry and professional awards in finance, procurement, human resources, public relations, customer service and CSR were won.