Airtel Africa Plc has released its full-year financial statement for the year ending March 31, 2024, which showed that the company lost $89 million after tax, during the fiscal year.
This represents a significant decline from the $750 million profit after tax recorded in the previous fiscal year.
The company said its financial performance was mainly hit by the instability of the naira in the fiscal year, [pointing out that it recorded foreign exchange losses of $770 million due to the devaluation of the Naira from N463/$ as of June 2023 to N1303/$ as of March 2024.
It said the naira devaluation also affected the company’s revenue baseline.
In reported currency, the USD, Airtel Africa posted a revenue of $4.98 billion in FY ‘23/24, representing a 5.3 per cent decline from the $5.26 billion posted in FY ‘22/23. However, in constant currency, Airtel’s revenue grew by 20.9 per cent over the course of the fiscal year.
Airtel Nigeria posted a revenue of $1.50 billion during the fiscal year, representing a 29.4 per cent decline from the $2.13 billion revenue posted in FY ‘22/23. However, in Naira terms, the group’s revenue appreciated by 25.8 per cent.
Airtel Nigeria posted $711 million and $654 million in voice and data revenue respectively. Airtel customer base in Nigeria also increased to 50.9 million, representing a 5.3% growth from the 48.9 million customers posted in the previous fiscal year.
In his statement, the CEO of Airtel, Olusegun Ogunsanya, highlighted the effectiveness of the company’s “strategic approach” in mitigating the adverse effects of currency fluctuations and driving revenue growth.
He said the consistent deployment of the company’s ‘Win with’ strategy supported the acceleration in constant currency revenue growth over the recent quarters which has reduced the impact of currency headwinds faced across most of our markets.
