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Africa’s largest mobile operator MTN says the data was one of its main drivers of revenue growth in the first financial quarter as the country was put under lockdown to stem the growth of the coronavirus pandemic.
The mobile operator recorded a 26.4% jump in data revenues in the first quarter that ended on March 31. Voice revenue fell 6.3%, while Fintech grew 26%.
“The impact of the pandemic on our first quarter performance was not significant as the closing restrictions for our consolidated subsidiaries have only been in place since the last week of March 2020,” said CEO Rob Shuter.
Digital revenue increased 15.6%. The demand for broadband has increased dramatically since the country was put under closure, with companies making employees work from home in a bid to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.
“We continue to generate business momentum by adding 6.6 million subscribers in the quarter, with active data users increasing by 2.9 million and MoMo subscribers by 0.4 million.”
In January, MTN announced the relaunch of its mobile money service (MoMo) in the local market, taking advantage of the country’s growing mobile finance technology space.
The chief financial office, Ralph Mupita, said that MTN experienced a continuous increase in data traffic during the month of April. Voice traffic and mobile money transactions were under pressure in light of various blocking measures.
The company said the current environment is “marked by significant uncertainties,” adding that it was still too early to assess the economic impact of the pandemic on customers and to reliably quantify the direct or indirect financial effects on our business.
