MTN Group posted group service revenue of R218.5 billion ($12.96 billion) for the year ended 31 December 2025, a 22.7 percent increase in constant currency, as Nigeria and Ghana produced results that have fundamentally reordered the telecoms giant’s revenue geography. The West African pair — long outperformed by MTN South Africa in rand-denominated terms — now jointly account for nearly half of group service revenue. Nigeria, for the first time, has overtaken South Africa as MTN’s single largest revenue contributor.
The broader result marked a decisive return to profitability. MTN Group reported profit before tax of R47.4 billion ($2.81 billion), swinging from a restated pre-tax loss of R4.1 billion ($243 million) in 2024 — a period when naira and cedi devaluations pushed reported earnings into loss territory. EBITDA excluding once-off items rose 36.8 percent in constant currency to R98.5 billion ($5.84 billion), with the margin expanding 5.4 percentage points to 44.5 percent. Adjusted headline earnings per share grew 67 percent to R13.59 (from a restated R8.14). The board declared a dividend of 500 cents per share — up 45 percent from 345 cents in 2024 — alongside a R6 billion share buyback programme. Free cash flow surged 345.5 percent to R26.9 billion, reducing net debt to EBITDA to 0.3 times from 0.7 times in the prior year.
“The Group’s overall performance in 2025 was excellent,” said Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita. “In the final year of our Ambition 2025 strategy, we were proud to have exceeded the 300 million customers milestone in line with our priority to deepen digital and financial inclusion.”
West Africa: Why Nigeria and Ghana Are Pulling Away
Nigeria’s turnaround is the centrepiece of the FY2025 story. MTN Nigeria delivered service revenue of N5.2 trillion, representing growth of 54.9 percent in constant currency. EBITDA more than doubled to R32.5 billion ($1.93 billion), with the margin expanding 13.6 percentage points to 52.7 percent. The operation swung from a loss after tax of R6.8 billion ($408 million) in 2024 to a profit of R13.1 billion ($786 million) — a near-R20 billion reversal in a single year. Nigeria now contributes 28.1 percent of group service revenue and 33 percent of group EBITDA; by EBITDA, it runs 84 percent ahead of South Africa’s $1.05 billion contribution.
MTN Ghana is the less-heralded but equally important part of the West Africa story. The Accra-based operation grew service revenue 35.9 percent in constant currency, contributing 18.7 percent of group service revenue and recording the group’s highest EBITDA margin at 60.2 percent. Ghana’s EBITDA of $1.28 billion places it between Nigeria and South Africa — a ranking that would have seemed improbable three years ago.
Two forces are operating simultaneously here. The first is macro recovery. The naira stabilised materially through 2025 after the 2023–24 devaluation trough that had crushed rand-denominated reported earnings; Ghana’s cedi strengthened through the year as inflation subsided. These currency tailwinds inflate reported rand-denominated figures and investors should weigh the base effect carefully — some of the headline growth represents normalisation rather than operational outperformance.
The second driver is more durable, and it is where the structural story lives. This is not a subscriber volume story. MTN Nigeria’s base grew to 87.3 million users — solid, but not exceptional. The revenue leverage comes from higher usage per customer. Average monthly data consumption per user rose from 10.8GB to 12.5GB across the group. MTN Nigeria’s data revenue surged 74.2 percent and now represents more than half of total Nigerian service revenue — a milestone that reflects structural deepening of data penetration, not a one-year anomaly. ARPU is expanding, and it is being driven by data consumption, not voice. This distinction matters for how investors and competitors should read the West Africa growth story going into 2026.
South Africa, in this context, functions as a useful control: 2.0 percent service revenue growth and a 10.1 percent EBITDA decline confirm that the West African outperformance is market-specific, not a group-wide macro tailwind.
MoMo: Scale at the Platform Layer, a Gap at the Nigeria Layer
MTN’s mobile money platform MoMo ended 2025 with 70 million active customers across 16 markets, processing $500.3 billion in total transaction value — up 55.7 percent from $321.3 billion in 2024. Transaction volumes grew 14.9 percent to 23.3 billion, meaning average transaction values are rising as the platform moves up the value chain. The group’s lending platform facilitated $3.5 billion (approximately R59 billion) in total loan value, up 80.4 percent in constant currency, as the share of advanced services — lending, insurance, investment products, and digital payments — climbed from 29.9 percent to 34.1 percent of total MoMo revenue. Group fintech revenue reached approximately R28.8 billion ($1.71 billion), growing 23.2 percent in constant currency.
Ghana and Uganda are leading the product deepening. MTN Ghana’s fintech advanced services revenue grew 51.6 percent in constant currency, while the MoMo lending programme expanded significantly in Uganda. The aggregate picture is of a platform transitioning from payments rail to financial services infrastructure — the Ambition 2030 framing that MTN has now formally adopted.
Nigeria’s MoMo performance is the asterisk. Despite being MTN’s largest subscriber and revenue market, Nigeria has just 3.7 million active MoMo wallets from an 87.3 million subscriber base. The constraint is structural: MTN Nigeria operates under a Payment Service Bank (PSB) licence that limits the range of permitted financial services, preventing the full cross-sell of lending, insurance, and investment products available in full-licence markets. Mupita was direct: Nigeria “remains the company’s biggest fintech challenge.” The implication is significant. MTN’s largest market is simultaneously its most underpenetrated fintech opportunity. Resolving this — through regulatory evolution or product innovation within PSB constraints — is one of the defining strategic questions for the Ambition 2030 period, and one we will track closely. For the group’s broader acquisition strategy and capital deployment plans, see our March 10 analysis of MTN’s $2 billion fintech war chest.
The Forward Picture
Market reception to the results was unambiguous. A 45 percent dividend increase and a R6 billion buyback signal management’s confidence in cash generation sustainability. MTN Group has guided for MTN Nigeria to deliver average service revenue growth of at least the low-20 percent range from 2026 onwards, with an EBITDA margin target of 53 to 55 percent — suggesting the West African engine remains on full throttle even as currency base effects normalise.
The new Ambition 2030 strategy organises the group around three platforms: Connectivity, Fintech, and Digital Infrastructure. It is, in effect, a structural bet that the West African growth trajectory is not a one-year rebound but a sustained shift driven by data penetration, fintech adoption, and ARPU expansion in markets that are nowhere near saturation. The group now has 307 million subscribers, 172 million data users, and 70 million MoMo customers — each of these layers representing an upsell opportunity for the next.
The caution note is currency. Reported rand figures will moderate as the naira stabilisation base effect rolls through 2026. MTN Nigeria’s own guidance of “at least low-20 percent” service revenue growth is considerably more measured than the 54.9 percent posted in 2025. The constant-currency growth is real; the question is how much of the reported figure survives normalisation. Investors reading the 2026 results will need to watch that number closely.
— Business Reporter, BETAR.africa
