By Prince Osuagwu, Hi-Tech Editor

The Nigerian arm of telecom operator Airtel Africa has pushed its earnings to $425 million, approximating N182.33 billion on official N429 per dollar exchange. The Nigerian operation also helped the group to repay $450m of debt .

The telco on its Q2, 2022 financial accounts, reported a 13 percent revenue growth fuelled by total revenue for the combination of mobile services and mobile money services of Nigeria which grew by 18.3 percent.

Nigeria’s growth was more than that of East Africa, which grew by 14.1 percent, and in Francophone Africa by 11.7 percent.

On its own the mobile money service grew by 26.5 percent, driven by growth of 26.9 percent in East Africa and 25.4 per cent in Francophone Africa.

Cumulatively, the company’s operating profit grew by 20.6 per cent, amounting to $425 million.

CEO of Airtel, Segun Ogunsanya, expressed pleasure with the results, saying: “I am pleased to report that the Group has continued to post double-digit revenue growth, margin improvement and strong earnings growth. I am also particularly pleased with our ongoing strengthening of the balance sheet which continued after the period ended, with early repayment of $450m of debt at Group level”

As we flagged in our full year announcement, this quarter we have faced headwinds from outbound voice call barring for customers who had not yet registered their National Identification Numbers in Nigeria and the loss of site sharing revenue in those OpCos where we recently sold towers. Inflation is also having an impact on our cost base, particularly on energy costs, but our continued efficiency drives have ensured that we have still been able to increase our margins, albeit at a slightly slower rate.

“After receiving the Payment Service Bank licence in Nigeria just a few months ago, it is a testament to our prior preparation that we have already managed to launch our mobile money operations in a few select locations without any operational issues. We are excited by the commercial developments and opportunities here. We also continued to invest for growth and have made a couple of major additional spectrum acquisitions recently in the DRC and Kenya in anticipation of continued strong data demand growth in these markets.

We continue to target growth ahead of the market this year and, despite inflationary pressures, our continued focus on cost efficiencies should also support margin resilience.

“ Longer term, the opportunities for sustainable profitable growth stemming from our underpenetrated markets for each of mobile voice, data and mobile money services remain hugely attractive, and we are confident of continuing to deliver on our growth strategy “he added.