Shares in JSE-listed mobile operator MTN Group continued to tumble in midday trade on Thursday, off 2.8% amid heightened tensions between Iran and the US, with Europe also entering the fray.<\/p>\n
The group declined R4.32 on Wednesday and was down a further R3.93, or 2.81% at R135.68 in noon trade on Thursday after the US Congress granted President Barack Obama the power to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme with further sanctions urged by the EU. Sanctions would block payments for the Middle Eastern country\u2019s crude oil.<\/p>\n
A local dealer at BoE Stockbrokers<\/em> <\/em>told MyBroadband: \u201cThe problems in Iran haven\u2019t gone away. There is talk of further Capex spend in Nigeria, but the real story is Iran. It could be hugely detrimental if that story plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that MTN would spend more than $1 billion in 2012 to improve its network in Nigeria.<\/p>\n One other trader at PSG Konsult cautioned that volumes were still very thin as investors returned to the office following the festive period. She noted however, that MTN\u2019s Iran unit made up a decent junk of the group\u2019s business.<\/p>\n Having opened at R143.93 on the JSE on Wednesday, shares in MTN contracted more than 3% by the close of play. Shares in MTN Group had moved from approximately R127 in late September 2010 to in excess of R145 at the start of January 2012.<\/p>\n For the quarter ended 30 September 2011 MTN Group recorded 158.59 million subscribers with Iran at 33.314 million subscribers.<\/p>\n In August, MTN reported group revenue for the interim period to R56.5 billion mainly due to strong growth in MTN\u2019s South African and Iranian operations of 5.9% and 12.1% respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shares in JSE-listed mobile operator MTN Group continued to tumble in midday trade on Thursday, off 2.8% amid heightened tensions between Iran and the US, with Europe also entering the fray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,175,189,28,173],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-jse","tag-mobile-2","tag-mtn","tag-shares"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1227,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions\/1227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}