MTN Ghana has declared a profit after tax of GH¢1.4 billion for the 2020 financial year.
Subsequently, the biggest and most successful telecoms company in the country announced an amount of 8Gp per share after approving a dividend payout of GH¢614.5 million.
This represents 70.49 per cent of its profit for the year in review.
The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, announced this at the 3rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the company since it listed on the local bourse and first to be organised virtually since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
More successes
The MTN boss said the company recorded 4.6 million new customers in 2020 taking its total subscriber base to 24.4 million.
This achievement, he explained, was in spite of the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which sent many businesses to their knees.
In the same period under review, Mr Adadevoh said MTN also recorded some 2.6 million increases in data customers, and 1.5 million rise in mobile money customers, bringing to 10.6 million, the total number of mobile money customers.
These successes contributed to the 16.4 per cent growth in service revenue over the period, after the GH¢1.5 billion capital expenditure in network capacity improvement.
Mr Adadevoh said in line with the company’s vision to become a data operator by 2023, the company saw a clear growth in data and mobile money contributions to service revenue, while voice contribution to service revenue declined.
According to him, the shift in consumer behaviour due to COVID-19 also led to a 328 per cent surge on MyMTN and Ayoba usage, particularly for gaming and other digital purposes.
COVID challenges
Mr Adadevoh said MTN focused on supporting its people, customers and the government through various interventions that eventually paid off despite the year in review being a challenging one for all businesses due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
He said the initiative to tackle the COVID-19 impact was dubbed “Yello Hope”, under which health and safety of staff was paramount as reflected in comprehensive measures put in place to facilitate remote work while ensuring workers delivered on targets.
According to him, MTN also had a daily life monitoring programme in place to ensure that workers who needed any special help got it.
“For our customers, we collaborated with Bank of Ghana to provide free person-to-person mobile money transfers of up to GH¢100.00 a day and that saved customers up to GH¢94 million in transfer fees,” he said.
He said the measure also prevented face to face interaction and deepened financial inclusion, adding that the free transfer offer had been extended until further notice.
Mr Adadevoh said MTN also provided free access to over 200 education sites, which is benefiting between four to five million students and teachers at various levels of education aside the scholarships under its Bright Scholars initiative.
Support for govt
The MTN Ghana boss said the government also benefitted from the MTN zero rated visits to several government sites where individuals could access health and other vital information.
Aside that, MTN also donated GH¢5million worth of PPE and other vital equipment to the government for the benefit of frontline health workers.
“We also donated 87,000 boxes of face masks to 31 health facilities and there is more support ongoing via the US$25 million the MTN Group has offered to the African Union for the COVID-19 fight,” he said.