Airtel Africa Q4 Net Profit Doubles to $154 million Y-o-Y

On Wednesday, Bharti Airtel’s Africa business, Airtel Africa, reported a net profit of $154 million in the Q4 this fiscal. Incidentally, this figure is double that of the same time period last year.

Airtel Africa on a Strong Footing

Strong growth in data and mobile money revenue and lower interest and tax expenses has caused this strong showing. The company further said that revenue also rose 15.4% to $1.04 billion.

Raghunath Mandava, CEO, said in a statement, “Our performance has been strong, with reported growth of 13.6% in underlying revenue and 18.3% in underlying EBITDA, and constant currency growth of 19.4% and 25.2%, respectively".

He further said "mobile money, data and voice each posted double-digit revenue growth”.

Mandava further said, “Our customer base also grew strongly for most of the year with new customer registration requirements in Nigeria stemming our onboarding of new customers in the final quarter, and these restrictions were lifted in second half of April”.

Development in Numbers

The telco's subscriber base across 14 countries in Africa declined 1% on-quarter to 118.2 million users. However, monthly churn rate dropped to 3.9%, the lowest in the last five years. Over the year, the subscriber base grew 6.9%. The telco also reported a 6.6% growth in ARPU to $2.9 in the January-March period.

Further, Airtel Africa's data revenue grew 24.2% Y-o-Y to $315 million. Voice contributed the most to revenue, with average revenue at $547 million, despite being the slowest at 7.2%. Airtel Africa said that its users consumed 118.2 million minutes of voice. The telco also reported 40.6 million data customers.

Mobile money is looking the best of the company's businesses, with a 32.7% Y-o-Y growth. It reported a revenue of $110 million. There are 21.7 million mobile money users, with an ARPU of $1.7. Both the stats grew by 18.5% and 6%, respectively.

In March, the company announced an investment of $200 million by TPG’s Rise Fund and $100 million by Mastercard in Airtel Mobile Commerce BV ("AMC BV"). The investors valued the mobile money business at $2.65 billion on a cash and debt free basis.

Mandava mentioned selling some of Airtel Africa's tower business to raise further funds, apart from the $300 million these two minority investors will bring.