Shareholders of MTN Nigeria Plc have recorded a funds wipe-out following a loss before tax of N177.8 billion.
This is the company’s first-ever loss since it became a quoted company in Nigeria.
The company, which recorded a pre-tax profit of N518.8 billion a year earlier, attributed the current losses to a massive foreign currency loss of N740 billion up from N81 billion reported in 2022.
“The loss was significantly due to operational changes to the Nigerian Foreign exchange market, including the abolishment of the segmented/parallel structure announced by CBN in June 2023,” MTN said.
The firm also also stated that it has used an official (NAFEM) exchange rate of N907.11/$1 as of 31 December 2023, suggesting losses could be wider if the current exchange rate between the naira and dollar persists by the end of March when it publishes its Q1 results.
Total revenue for 2023 was N2.469 trillion, compared to 2022 which was N2.012 trillion, a growth of 22.69 per cent, year on year.
The firm also recorded a positive growth of 5.38 per cent year on year in its operating profit, which grew to N773.660 billion in 2023 from the N734.164 billion it was in 2022, while finance income rose to N25.815 billion in 2023 from N13.768 billion it was in 2022, showing percentage increase of 87.50 year on year and finance cost for 2023 was N236.927 billion from N147.287 billion in 2022, indicating a growth of 60.86 per cent year on year.
Meanwhile, total subscribers increased by 5.3 per cent to 79.7 million, active data users increased by 12.7 per cent to 44.6 million, active mobile money (MoMo PSB) wallets increased by 163.2 per cent to 5.3 million, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 12.3 per cent to N1.2 trillion, EBITDA margin decreased by 4.5 percentage points (pp) to 48.7 per cent and net loss for the year resulted in a depletion of its retained earnings and shareholders’ fund to negative N208.0 billion and N40.8 billion, respectively
MTN Nigeria said as a result of the substantial currency devaluation and its repercussions on retained earnings, the directors will not propose a final dividend payment, given the resultant loss for the year ended December 31, 2023.
