February 06, (THEWILL) – Telecom giant, Airtel Africa, has recorded an earnings spike that helped its after-tax profit almost double to more than half a billion dollars in the nine months to December.
According to Airtel’s unaudited earnings report issued last Friday, profit within the period increased by 97 per cent to $514 million on post-COVID-19 data boom.
Also revenue leapt by 21.7 per cent to $3.5 billion, drawing support from its data business, whose contribution to turnover in constant currency approached one-third of Airtel’s turnover.
A rapid acceptance of mobile money services in its Nigerian, East African and Francophone Africa markets means earnings from that income source, now at $406 million, accelerated at the rate 37.2 per cent when set beside the figure posted a year earlier.
The future of earnings for the telco will be substantially shaped by its mobile money business which, having been spun off from its regular operation after hitting a valuation of $2.65 billion last March, pooled $550 million from investors as varied as Mastercard, Qatar Investment Authority, Chimera Investment LLC and San Francisco-based TPG in less than nine months.
Profit before tax for the period stood at $894 million, compared to the $482 million posted in the relative period of 2020.
Profit after tax spiralled by 97.3 per cent to $514 million. It was $261 million a year earlier.
Commenting on the development, the Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Africa, Segun Ogunsanya said “We have also seen further improvement in our customer growth trends for the Group with Nigeria returning to strong customer growth”.
According to Ogunsanya, that followed “a period affected by the implementation of new ‘know your customer’ requirements, posting 1.9 million net additions in the third quarter, taking total group customer additions to 3.1 million.”
