ACCORDING to financial statements received, MTN Nigeria Communications Plc and Airtel Nigeria both made N2.02 trillion in airtime and data revenues in 2021.
The sum represents a 20.01 percent increase over the N1.68 trillion in revenue generated by both companies from airtime and data in 2020.
Because 9mobile and Globacom’s financial statements aren’t available to the public, it’s impossible to know how much money they made from data and airtime revenues.
MTN made N819.74 billion from airtime and N516.21 billion from data in 2021; in 2020, it made N766.39 billion from airtime and N332.37 billion from data. Airtel earned N397.91 billion ($957 million) in 2021 and N287.31 billion ($691 million) in 2020 from airtime and data, respectively; in 2020, it earned N370.47 billion ($891 million) and N214.96 billion ($517 million) from airtime and data, respectively.
MTN said in its financial statement for the year ended December 2021 and that data revenue had continued to rise even as the company expanded its 4G coverage. According to the report, the average megabyte per subscriber increased by 85.3 percent in the past year.
It said, “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.
“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 also stated that its voice revenue increased by 8.4% as compared to 2020, owing to increased usage among its active SIM base, which saw a 7.9% increase in minutes of use.
According to Airtel, voice revenue increased by 8.4%, resulting in a 7.9% increase in minutes used.
Segun Ogunsanya, Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Africa Plc also stated that:
“Voice revenues posted year on year growth of 9.9%, almost 10% in the quarter, a slight slowdown given the softer quarter particularly in Q1, but still reflecting year on year customer growth of 5.8%, adding voice ARPU growth of 5.2 percent,”
“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.”
