Telecommunication giant MTN Nigeria has blamed the “liberal foreign exchange management,” currency redesign and increase in fuel prices for the N740 billion loss it incurred in 2023.
The year saw MTN recording its first loss since it became a quoted company on NGX.
“2023 witnessed a very challenging operating environment characterised by rising inflation, currency devaluation and foreign exchange shortages, complicated by geopolitical disruptions and cash shortages in Q1 arising from a redesign of the naira,” MTN said in a report.
“These factors created severe headwinds for our customers and our business during the year. The inflation rate increased throughout the year, reaching 28.9% in December 2023 – the highest reading in 18 years – with an average rate of 24.5%.”
The company added that the loss caused by the harsh business environment was significantly due to operational changes to the Nigerian Foreign exchange market, including the abolishment of the segmented and parallel structure announced by CBN in June 2023.
MTN disclosed that following the December 2023 directive of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for telecoms operators to disconnect unlinked SIMs to NIN, it discovered that 19 million needed verifications.
In the report, MTN said it had verified 4.3 million telephone lines. The firm disclosed this in its Audited Financial results for the year ended December 31, 2023.
“We are actively engaging the authorities to accelerate the NIN verification process. We have also increased our engagement with the affected customers, providing various channels for verification to minimize service disruption,” MTN said in the report.
MTN Nigeria’s CEO, Karl Toriola, said the company maintained strong commercial momentum in its connectivity business and platforms, supported by the growth in the user base.
“We added over 4 million subscribers in 2023, bringing our total base to 79.7 million. We also increased our data subscribers by over five million to 44.6 million, which helped to drive total data traffic growth of 44.9 per cent.
“This reflected the sustained growth in demand for data, supported by our compelling propositions to customers and the consistent investment in the quality and coverage of our network.”
