MTN makes N1.33tr, Airtel N685.22b
MTN generated a total N1.33 trillion from airtime (N819.74 billion) and data (N516.21 billion) in 2021, more than the total N1.09 trillion it made in 2020 from airtime (N766.39 billion) and data (N332.37 billion).
The figures reinforce MTN market dominance as it generated nearly twice the income of its closest rival, Airtel, based on their financial statements. Globacom and 9mobile had not made their financial statements public at the time of writing.
Airtel made N685.22 billion from airtime (N397.91 billion) ($957 million) and data (N287.31 billion) ($691 million) in 2021, above N585.43 billion made in 2020 from airtime (N370.47 billion) ($891 million) and data N214.96 billion ($517 million).
MTN and Airtel both generated N2.02 trillion from the two revenue streams in 2021 against N1.58 trillion in 2020, a rise of 27.84 per cent.
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) data for 2021 shows that MTN and Airtel are the two major national telecom carriers in Nigeria, with a total 150,825,830,687.40 minutes of calls made.
A total 145,420,101,695 calls (96.42 per cent) were made from MTN lines which translated as 103,531,547,686 minutes. A total 41,888,554,009 minutes of calls were made from Airtel lines.
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MTN growth projections
“Data revenue rose by 55.3 per cent, maintaining an accelerated growth trajectory in Q4 as we continue to accelerate the expansion of our 4G coverage, enhance the quality and capacity of our network to support increasing data traffic, and grow active data users,” MTN said in its financial statement for 2021.
“Average MB per user rose by 62.7 per cent, enabling overall data traffic growth of 85.3 per cent. Also, smartphone penetration on the network grew by 4.0pp to 50 per cent. Our 4G network now covers 70.3 per cent of the population, up from 60.1 per cent in December 2020.”
MTN added that its voice revenue grew 8.4 per cent above that of 2020 as a result of higher usage in active SIM base which saw 7.9 per cent growth in minutes of use, reported by The PUNCH.
Airtel growth projections
Airtel voice revenue rose 8.4 per cent, resulting in 7.9 per cent growth in minutes of use.
“Voice revenues posted year on year growth of 9.9 per cent, almost 10 per cent in the quarter, a slight slowdown given the softer quarter particularly in Q1 but still reflecting year on year customer growth of 5.8 per cent, adding voice ARPU growth of 5.2 per cent,” Airtel Africa Chief Executive Officer Segun Ogunsanya said.
“We still fundamentally believe that with the low customer penetration levels across our footprint of 14 countries, combined with very low minutes of usage, there is still a very long runway for voice revenues to continue to grow.”
