We hosted a small group Zoom call with MTN Group CEO, Ralph Mupita, MTN Group CFO, Tsholofelo Molefe and Head of IR, Thato Motlanthe last week. Tone was overall positive, with a particularly bullish conversation around consolidation across Africa.
Q1 was a solid quarter for the Sub-Saharan African operators, especially from a top line perspective. Airtel Africa continued to outperform peers overall. We continue to think that fundamentals for AAF and MTN are strong and deserve more attention. Valuations are compelling too.
We deep dive on African Telco’s Fintech valuations in this note which is a follow up of our higher-level note Show me the (Mobile) Money. African Telcos are becoming more active about unlocking value from Mobile Money (MoMo) with MTN’s recent deal with Mastercard and now rumours that AAF is looking to IPO its MoMo business. Global Fintech/Payments multiples have derated over the past couple of years, but we continue to see great value in the African Telco’s MoMo assets which remain one the key n...
Q3 was a decent quarter for Sub-Saharan African (SSA) operators. Fundamentals remain strong. We have updated forecasts post Q3 results, and our recommendations and target prices remain unchanged, except for Safaricom. AAF remains our preferred play in Africa.
This is the 3rd in a series of notes looking at FWA (see HERE and HERE). Like us, the market appears to be getting more bullish on FWA in EM, and a series of events such as Jio’s launch suggest FWA could be a significant use case for 5G in Emerging Markets.
Safaricom reported a solid set of 1HFY24 results today. Service revenue growth accelerated driven by a solid performance from M-PESA and mobile data. EBITDA growth slowed but remained robust. The Group has lifted its EBIT guidance for Kenya this year (+KHsh 12bn), it also lifted capex expectations given the KES depreciation but by a smaller degree (+KHsh 3bn). FY24 guidance for Ethiopia is unchanged, so was mid-term guidance for capex and EBITDA.
10 days ago MTN announced it would not be renewing a contract for 2,500 tenancies with IHS in Nigeria. This is a global first in the Towers space we believe (a financially healthy operator choosing not to renew an expiring tower contract).
MTN has reported a solid set of Q2 results. Group service revenue trends were stable while EBITDA trends accelerated. But the key announcement today was that of a commercial partnership through the signature of a MoU for a minority investment with Mastercard on the fintech side.
Vodacom reported a better set of results, with group service revenue coming in 0.5% ahead of consensus. Better group service revenue growth was supported by improvements in South Africa, led by price ups in its mobile contract business and better fixed service revenue.
MTN has reported a slower set of Q1 results which is not surprising given Nigeria, Ghana, and Rwanda already reported slower results earlier and the issues around load shedding/network availability in South Africa have been well flagged in the previous quarter.
Like MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana last week, MTN Rwanda has reported a slower set of Q1 results, mostly because of the challenging macro environment and an increase in wholesale costs. MT guidance of “low to mid-teens growth in service revenue” is maintained.
Both MTN and AAF saw improvements in top line growth, driven by the recovery in voice in Q4. MTN slightly outperformed AAF in service revenue but AAF outperformed on the EBITDA side and with low capex intensity in Q4 AAF posted strong OpFCF margins.
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