MTN Ghana’s 1H11 revenues improve, margins drop

Ghana’s largest mobile operator MTN saw its 1H11 revenues improve by 11.9% year-on-year, while the EBITDA margin continued to slide. Operational expenditures climbed by 19% year-on-year in 1H11. But the change in the company’s network strategy which is geared towards tower sharing is starting to have an impact on the capital and operational expenditures. MTN reported GHS102 million (US$67million) in gain from the sale of 400 towers to its infrastructure sharing joint venture with American Tower Company (ATC).

Ghana’s largest mobile operator MTN saw its 1H11 revenues improve by 11.9% year-on-year, while the EBITDA margin continued to slide. Operational expenditures climbed by 19% year-on-year in 1H11. But the change in the company’s network strategy which is geared towards tower sharing is starting to have an impact on the capital and operational expenditures. MTN reported GHS102 million (US$67million) in gain from the sale of 400 towers to its infrastructure sharing joint venture with American Tower Company (ATC). MTN Ghana has a 49% stake in the joint venture. Separately, the company also cited the difficulties in tower approval process slowing the rollouts. The capital expenditure steeply dropped to ZAR137million (US$19.4million) in 1H11, compared to ZAR 1.4billion during 1H10.