MTN Ghana paid out some GHS2.767 billion in direct and indirect taxes for the year 2021, which represent 35.8% of its total revenue for the year, and over 163% higher than what it paid in 2020.
This is contained in the company’s recently released full year report.
In 2020, MTN paid GHS1.052 billion in taxes. The 2021 figure is GHS1.715 billion higher than that of the previous.
This was in spite of the fact that the company recorded much lower rates of increase in customer base across board in 2021, compared to the rates of increase in 2020.
In the year under review, MTN recorded some 3.9 per cent increase in total subscriber base, from 24.4 million in 2020 to 25.4 million. Meanwhile, in 2020 the rate of increase in subscriber base was 23.4 per cent.
Again, active data subscribers grew by 15.3% to 12.4 million, compared to 32.4% growth in 2020.
The telecoms market leader also saw some 3.8 % increase in its active Mobile Money subscribers to 11 million in the year under review. Meanwhile, in 2020, the rate of increase was 16.3%.
In spite of the lower rates of increases in the customer base in 2021, MTN recorded very impressive performance on the financial side.
Service revenue grew by 28.5% to GHS7.701 billion, while total revenue stood at GHS7.723 billion; earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased by 33.7% to GHS4.249 billion, while EBITDA margin was up by 2.3 percentage points to 55.0%.
Data
Data revenue alone grew by an impressive 56.3% to reach GHS2.76 billion, indicating that the company’s digital operator strategy is already paying off big time.
According to the report, the performance in data reveneu was as a result of 54.9% increase data traffic owing to various commercial interventions, improvements to the network, changes in consumer usage behaviour and 10.6% increase in smartphones on the network.
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The contribution of data to service revenue increased from 29.6% in 2020, to 36% in 2021 in line with MTN’s revenue diversification strategy.
Mobile Money
Mobile Money also saw an impressive increase in revenue by 38.2% year on year to GHS1.734 billion. Its contribution to service revenue also increased from 20.9% to 22.5% year on year. YoY.
The report attributed the performance of Mobile Money to 29.9% expansion in merchants and 18.7% increase in agents across the country, which now supports ongoing growth of the MoMo ecosystem and to further enhance financial inclusion.
Growth in Mobile Money advanced service offerings such as retail merchant payments, micro loans, insurance, and international remittances also supported the performance,” it added.
The company’s total capital expenditure (CAPEX) for the period was GHS1.485 billion and they spent some GHS14.3 million on socio-economic initiatives.
As a result of the smart strategies put in place, the company walked away with over GHS2 billion profit after after tax, on the back of which it is proposing to the pay out some GHS0.085 dividend to shareholders this year.