{"id":44196,"date":"2013-08-14T23:45:02","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T21:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=44196"},"modified":"2013-08-15T08:39:37","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T06:39:37","slug":"mtn-shares-break-through-r200","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/44196\/mtn-shares-break-through-r200\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN shares hit R200 landmark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shares in MTN Group<\/a> broke through the coveted R200 level on the JSE on Wednesday (14 August), after the group\u2019s results were\u00a0perceived\u00a0to better than analysts\u2019 original forecasts.<\/p>\n

Shares in MTN closed at R199, representing a new all-time high for the group, having hit an intraday best level of R200.90, and giving the Africa’s largest mobile operator a market cap of \u00a0R374.50 billion.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the group reported a 9.8% rise in revenue\u00a0in\u00a0interim results for the six months ended June 2013,\u00a0to 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 of 370 cents, up\u00a015.3%.<\/p>\n

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

An analyst at PSG Konsult<\/a> pointed to MTN’s growth in its data. “MTN’s results were better than expected, which enabled the group to reach a new high. The big story is the growth in its data, which is now more than Vodacom<\/a>.”<\/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

The analyst added that investors were also likely cheered by the group’s dividend increase, adding that he expected the group to break through R200 in the coming sessions.<\/p>\n

Nadim Mohamed<\/a>, investment analyst and partner at\u00a0First Avenue Investment Management<\/a>\u00a0said he was a bit surprised at the positive market reaction to the results.<\/p>\n

He said that if one strips out the effect of foreign exchange movements and reclassification of the MTN Syria intergroup loan, revenue declined 1.9% in constant currency terms.<\/p>\n

Mohamed cautioned that the effect of regulatory intervention in its markets, especially South Africa and Nigeria, is evident with average price per minute down 29.5% across all ops in US dollar terms.<\/p>\n

“MTN has however guided that H2 will be better and perhaps this, together with the dividend, increase is the basis for the positive market reaction,” Mohamed said.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cThe\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.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on MTN<\/h3>\n

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

MTN CEO warns \u201cdestructive\u201d rivals<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mobile subscribers in SA: who\u2019s eating whose lunch?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shares in MTN Group broke through the coveted R200 level on the JSE on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":37940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2160,26,175,1120,3757,1310],"class_list":["post-44196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-first-avenue-investment-management","tag-headline","tag-jse","tag-mtn-group","tag-nadim-mohamed","tag-psg-konsult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44196","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=44196"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44220,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44196\/revisions\/44220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}