MTN Group Limited

For the 6 months ended 30 June 2026, MTN reported service revenue growth of 17.5% on a constant-currency basis. EBITDA margin was the strongest seen since around 2012, and adjusted headline earnings per share rose 21.3% to ZAR 7.93 per share. Equity free cash flow increased 32.7%, return on capital employed improved to 31.5%, and cash upstreaming was ZAR 13.9 billion. Reported fintech service revenue growth was 13.3%, but management said that excluding three nonoperating impacts it would have been closer to 19.3%. Management reaffirmed medium-term guidance overall, but said fintech would be out of guidance for the full year; Nigeria service revenue guidance remains intact, while Nigeria EBITDA margin should land at the lower end of the roughly 53% range because of higher energy costs.

Ralph Mupita’s tone was upbeat and explanatory, emphasizing “strong commercial momentum,” broad-based growth, and improved profitability across the portfolio. He highlighted Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Uganda as key contributors, while framing South Africa’s prepaid reset and Nigeria’s regulatory disruption as deliberate or temporary issues rather than structural deterioration. He also stressed strategic priorities such as the IHS transaction, the share buyback, and launching a new fintech platform in Nigeria with Ant Financial.

Mupita, filling in for the CFO, said the balance sheet remained strong with group leverage at 0.3x and liquidity headroom above minimum levels. He called out a ZAR 3.9 billion impairment on the 49% Irancell stake, hyperinflationary effects of ZAR 0.22 per share, and foreign-exchange impacts of ZAR 0.65 per share tied mainly to South Sudan and Ghana repatriation. He also noted ZAR 13.9 billion of cash upstreaming, capex intensity of 16.6% (just shy of ZAR 20 billion), and about ZAR 1.2 billion of expense savings from the efficiency program.

Analysts pressed management on South Africa’s extra-time rationalization, Cell C roaming and payment timing, South Africa capex, tax contingencies, Ghana’s growth runway and whether margins could attract regulatory attention, the pace of the ZAR 6 billion buyback, and how MTN will communicate temporary shocks like Nigeria’s slowdown. Management said South Africa extra-time penetration had been cut to a level they are now comfortable with and they are beginning to re-push it carefully; on Cell C they said the relationship is healthy but details are constrained by NDA. On Nigeria and fintech, they said the airtime-advance recovery should rebuild in Q3/Q4 with four vendors in place, while the new fintech platform in Nigeria is being launched soon to address latency and support lending growth.