{"id":44117,"date":"2013-08-14T08:21:19","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T06:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=44117"},"modified":"2013-08-19T09:05:14","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T07:05:14","slug":"mtn-continues-to-lose-sa-subscribers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/44117\/mtn-continues-to-lose-sa-subscribers\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN continues to lose SA subscribers"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN Group<\/a> has on Wednesday (14 August) reported that its\u00a0total subscriber base for South Africa declined by 420,000 to 25 million in\u00a0interim results for the six months ended June 2013.<\/p>\n

In April, the group reported a net loss of 470,000 customers in the first quarter (from January 1 and March 31).<\/p>\n

“MTN South Africa felt the effects of weaker consumer demand and was slow to respond to aggressive\u00a0price competition in both voice and data offerings,” MTN said.<\/p>\n

Overall group subscribers, however, increased 6.5% in the interim period, to 201.5 million, supported by competitive offerings and increased network capacity, MTN said.<\/p>\n

The group said that revenue increased 9.8% to R65.248 billion, while operating profit grew marginally, to R19.596 billion, from R19.184 billion before.<\/p>\n

Headline earnings per share increased 22% to 654 cents, and group ebitda increased by 6,4% to R27.743 billion.<\/p>\n

MTN declared an interim dividend per share \u00a0of 370 cents, up\u00a015.3%.<\/p>\n

MTN said its results reflect a challenging operating environment given the sustained global economic slowdown, highly competitive mobile markets and regulatory pressures, which have seen average voice tariffs across its markets fall 29.5% year-on-year (YoY) in US dollar terms.<\/p>\n

\"South<\/a>

South African Mobile Subscribers<\/p><\/div>\n

MTN South Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n

“MTN South Africa felt the effects of weaker consumer demand and was slow to respond to aggressive\u00a0price competition in both voice and data offerings,” the group said.<\/p>\n

Total revenue for its SA operation declined by 1.4% to R20.146 billion, however, data revenue, including MTN Business<\/a>, increased by 14.7% to R4.016 billion \u00a0and contributed 19,9% to total revenue.<\/p>\n

Handsets and accessories revenue grew by 16.0% to R3.023 billion. During the six-month
\nperiod, MTN South Africa sold 2.4 million pre-paid phones and 699,000 post-paid handsets.<\/p>\n

Blended ARPU declined by 13.3% to R105.40 from R121.52 in June 2012.<\/p>\n

Capex for the period in SA amounted to R2.151 billion with a focus on 2G and 3G coverage, quality and\u00a0capacity. The 3G population coverage is now 67.7%, MTN said.<\/p>\n

MTN Group<\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN said group data revenue increased by 36.9% as the number of data subscribers reached 65.4\u00a0million, an increase of 29.5% on the prior year.<\/p>\n

Data contribution to total revenue was 13.9%,\u00a0(18.0% including SMS) and the upward trend is expected to continue, it said.<\/p>\n

Data subscriber numbers increased by 29.5% to 65.4 million and data traffic grew by 55.7%. “This was achieved through extending our 3G coverage as well as through the increased number of data-enabled devices, which have reached 122.2 million.<\/p>\n

“Our network has 31.6 million smartphones in use and increasing smartphone penetration remains an important objective,” MTN said.<\/p>\n

MTN said invested R12.792 billion into its network, an increase of 32.7%, bringing 2,130 2G and 1,800 3G sites on air.<\/p>\n

Capex already committed for the\u00a0second half of the year stands at R8.119 billion, the group said.<\/p>\n

Over the first six months of 2013, voice traffic volumes increased 26.2% YoY and voice revenue grew\u00a07.9%. Voice revenue now accounts for 63.7% of total revenue, down from 64.8% in 2012, MTN said.<\/p>\n

On a YoY basis, the average price per minute (APPM) declined by 29.5% in US dollar terms.<\/p>\n

The group said its\u00a0MTN Mobile Money and financial services offering continues to gain traction in existing and\u00a0new markets and had almost 12.1 million users at the end of June 2013, a YoY increase of 64.5%.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, MTN said it expects to\u00a0deliver improved YoY organic growth in both revenue\u00a0and ebitda.<\/p>\n

“The\u00a0recovery in our Nigerian operation is expected to continue over the second half, supported by a\u00a0strong capital expenditure programme. We expect the group to add a total of 21.1 million subscribers\u00a0for the full 2013 year.”<\/p>\n

In the medium term, the group said it will also continue to leverage its inherent strength in adjacent industries and explore value accretive M&A activities.<\/p>\n

[Edit<\/strong>: The original article said that MTN’s South African customers had declined by 600,000 – this was inaccurate and has been corrected to a decline of 420,000 customers as per MTN’s report.]<\/p>\n

More on MTN<\/h3>\n

MTN expects earnings boost<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN loses out on Myanmar licence<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why MTN CFO Nazir Patel resigned<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN Group has reported that its total subscriber base for South Africa declined “marginally”, by 420,000 to 25 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,28],"class_list":["post-44117","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\/44117","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=44117"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44374,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44117\/revisions\/44374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}