Airtel Nigeria has reported 22.2% growth in revenue for the first half of 2019 supported by double-digit growth in voice and data revenue.
According to its half-year financial results released on Friday, voice revenue increased 12.7% while data revenue was up 73.1%. Airtel Nigeria explains the results are driven by a double-digit increase in customer growth and the expansion of its 4G network.
Business Insider SSA by Pulse's analysis of the report shows that the Nigerian market still retains the largest share of the company's earnings in the first half of the year. In East Africa, which consists of Tanzania, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, the Bharti company's revenue increased by 4.0% to $276.6 million.
Raghunath Mandava, Chief Executive Officer, commented on the trading update: “I am pleased to report a strong start to the financial year, in our first quarterly results since the IPO. These results, which are in line with our expectations, are clear evidence of the effectiveness of our strategy across Voice, Data and Mobile Money.
"We also continue to prepare for the launch of our Mobile Money business in Nigeria, securing approval of the brand name, an important step as we await approval for our payment service bank license. The business continues to show momentum and we are confident of delivering sustained growth across Voice, Data and Mobile Money, underpinning our medium-term aspirations for revenue and profit growth.”
For the rest of the Africa market, revenue dipped by 8.0% to $208.7 million in H1 2019 compared to $226.8 million posted in the same period in 2018.
The poor performance was as a result of macro-economic weakness in Niger and the Republic of Congo, the company said.
The company’s overall profit after tax for the first half dipped by 12.2% to $132 million from $150.6 million a year ago. It's pretax profit rose to $167.4 million, more than double of the 2018 earnings.
Early this month, Airtel Africa Plc joined the Nigerian Stock Exchange through Cross Border Secondary Listing of 3,758,151,504 ordinary shares.
The listing of the Company’s shares added N1.36 trillion to its market capitalisation, coming right behind Dangote Cement and MTN Nigeria as the largest stocks on the bourse in value.
As of May 2018, the telco firm controls 26.32% of the total mobile market share in Nigeria with 45.4 million subscribers, according to NCC data.
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