Airtel Africa’s profit rises as revenue hits $3.91bn

Airtel Africa Plc reported on Wednesday a profit after tax of $415m for the year ended Mar. 31, 2021, up from $408m in the previous year.

It said its revenue grew by 14.2 percent to $3.91bn, with reported revenue growth of 15.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021.

The telecommunications company said constant currency underlying revenue growth was 19.4 percent, with Q4 2021 growth of 21.7 percent.

It said growth was recorded across all regions: Nigeria up 21.9 percent, East Africa up 23.5 percent and Francophone Africa up 10 percent; and across key services, with revenues for voice up 11.0 percent, data up 31.2 percent and mobile money up 35.5 percent.

Operating profit increased 24.2 percent to $1.12bn in reported currency, and by 32.8 percent in constant currency, while free cash flow was $647m, up 42.8 percent on the prior year.

“Our customer base grew by 6.9 percent to 118.2 million, with increased penetration across mobile data (customer base up 14.5 percent) and mobile money services (customer base up 18.5 percent). The recent slowdown in customer base growth has been due to new SIM registration regulations in Nigeria,” the telco said.

The board recommended a final dividend of 2.5 cents per share, making the total dividend for financial year 2021 4.0 cents per share.

The Chief Executive Officer, Raghunath Mandava, said, “Our performance has been strong, with reported growth of 13.6 percent in underlying revenue and 18.3 percent in underlying EBITDA, and constant currency growth of 19.4 percent and 25.2 percent respectively.

“Contributions to this growth came across all regions, with particular improvement in Francophone Africa, and across all our major services, with mobile money, data and voice each posting double-digit revenue growth.”

He said in line with the company’s strategy of unlocking value in its mobile money business, it would soon welcome two new minority investors (The Rise Fund and Mastercard) in agreed transactions which valued this part of its business at $2.65bn, as well as bringing $300m into the group.

“We have also agreed to sell more of our tower portfolio, yielding yet more cash for the business. The Covid pandemic had eased during the course of the year, however, more recently we have seen a surge in cases. So far this has had no adverse impact on the business, though we will continue to monitor the situation closely,” Mandava said.