{"id":96669,"date":"2015-03-05T09:14:57","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T09:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=96669"},"modified":"2015-03-05T09:14:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T09:14:57","slug":"mtn-group-revenue-rises-6-4-in-challenging-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=96669","title":{"rendered":"MTN Group revenue rises 6.4% in &#8216;challenging&#8217; 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MTN Group announced that its revenue for the year ended 31 December 2014 rose by 6.4 percent to ZAR 146.2 billion, despite a 3.9 percent contraction in the South African operation&#8217;s revenue and declines in the value of the Ghanaian cedi and the Syrian pound.<\/p>\n<p>Revenue growth was supported by an increase of 12.1 percent in MTN Nigeria&#8217;s revenue and weakness in the Rand, which had a 3.2 percent positive impact on revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Group EBITDA increased by 10.2 percent to ZAR 65.5 billion, with progress in cost optimisation efforts supporting a 1.5 percentage point expansion in the EBITDA margin to 44.8 percent for the year.<\/p>\n<p>Group subscribers increased by 7.5 percent to 223.4 million, driven by competitive pricing, segmented offerings and improved network quality and capacity in many markets.<\/p>\n<p>Subscriber figures were, however, affected by the alignment of internal subscriber reporting methodology in Cameroon, which negatively impacted reported subscriber numbers by about 1.6 million.<\/p>\n<p>Capital expenditure was ZAR 25.242 billion, which was 16.3 percent lower than the previous year.<\/p>\n<p>During 2014, the group rolled out 3,669 2G sites, 6,491 largely co-located 3G sites, and 684 LTE sites, facilitating increased voice and data usage on the network.<\/p>\n<p>Basic headline earnings per share (HEPS) increased by 8.9 percent to ZAR 0.1536 and attributable earnings per share (EPS) increased by 20.0 percent to ZAR 0.1752.<\/p>\n<p>The group said the 2014 results reflect a challenging year, with aggressive price competition, increased regulatory requirements and pressure on consumer expenditure.<\/p>\n<p>The sharp decline in the oil price in the second half of the year had a marked impact on the economies and exchange rates of a number of African and Middle Eastern countries.<\/p>\n<p>Notwithstanding these conditions, most of MTN&#8217;s large and small operating companies (opcos) showed promising improvements in operational performance.<\/p>\n<p>In 2015, MTN expects to benefit from a number of interventions put in place in South Africa and Nigeria in the previous year.<\/p>\n<p>In South Africa, the group expects to build on the positive momentum gained in revenue and subscriber additions in the second half of 2014.<\/p>\n<p>The South African operation will also accelerate its immediate capex plans to support MTN&#8217;s medium-term growth prospects, particularly in the data area.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: Telecom Paper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MTN Group announced that its revenue for the year ended 31 December 2014 rose by 6.4 percent to ZAR 146.2 billion, despite a 3.9 percent contraction in the South African operation&#8217;s revenue and declines in the value of the Ghanaian cedi and the Syrian pound. Revenue growth was supported by an increase of 12.1 percent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":44731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[20,4],"class_list":["post-96669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-mental-health-authority","tag-st-augustines-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}