{"id":304076,"date":"2019-03-07T13:32:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T11:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=304076"},"modified":"2019-03-07T13:32:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T11:32:12","slug":"we-are-the-best-network-in-south-africa-mtn-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/304076\/we-are-the-best-network-in-south-africa-mtn-ceo\/","title":{"rendered":"We are the best network in South Africa: MTN CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MTN Group CEO Rob Shuter says that the group&#8217;s South African operation has &#8216;turned a corner&#8217; with a strong set of results.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday (7 March), MTN reported a 10.7% jump in service revenue for the year ended December 2018, with revenue up 6% to R134.56 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Operating profit climbed to R23.6 billion, from R20.6 billion before.<\/p>\n<p>Reported headline earnings per share (HEPS) increased to 337 cents from 182 cents in 2017. Although significantly stronger, HEPS were negatively impacted by a YoY swing of 76 cents in the contribution from associates and joint ventures, MTN said.<\/p>\n<p>The board declared a gross final dividend of 325 cents per share, bringing the total dividend for the year to 500 cents per share.<\/p>\n<p>For MTN South Africa, service revenue increased by 4.2%, data revenue increased by 12.7%, and digital and fintech revenue increased by 4.7%.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Overall SA revenue climbed 5.1% to R44.66 billion (33.2% of total revenue)<\/li>\n<li>Data revenue climbed 12.7% to R12.9 billion<\/li>\n<li>Fintech revenue was up 66.3% to R918 million<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The mobile operator&#8217;s local subscriber base increased by 5.7% from December 2017 to 31.2 million as it continued to record network improvements and brought market share losses to an end, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The company\u2019s latest results showed that it has a total of 25.4 million prepaid subscribers and 2.9 million postpaid users, excluding telemetry subscribers.<\/p>\n<p>Shuter said at the company&#8217;s headquarters in Joburg that the South African operation has turned a corner.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have the biggest, and the best best network in South Africa by a significant margin.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">MTN has the best network in South Africa. By a large margin. Full stop! (yes I agree there is always more work to be done) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/celebrateprogress?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#celebrateprogress<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/StayHumble?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#StayHumble<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ZC9uimNj9q\">https:\/\/t.co\/ZC9uimNj9q<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Rob Shuter (@ShuterRob) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShuterRob\/status\/1101349226305474560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 1, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are drawing the line in market share losses for MTN South Africa,&#8221; Shuter said at the company\u2019s financial results presentation. &#8220;We have given up what we have given up, and going forward we are not going to be losing any more market share.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>MTN\u2019s current share of the South African cellular market is 28.40%, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Shares in the MTN climbed as much as 15% by the afternoon session on the JSE &#8211; the most since June 2016.<\/p>\n<p><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/MTN-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-304090\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/MTN-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"691\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/MTN-1.png 691w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/MTN-1-300x196.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 691px) 100vw, 691px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/303936\/mtn-delivers-strong-earnings-and-customer-growth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MTN delivers strong earnings and customer growth<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MTN Group CEO Rob Shuter says that the group&#8217;s South African operation has &#8216;turned a corner&#8217; following a strong set of results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":127697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,28],"class_list":["post-304076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-mtn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304076","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304076"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304096,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304076\/revisions\/304096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}