Profits recorded by local telecommunication giant, MTN Ghana, has surged by Ghs 1.053 billion representing a 53.1 per cent increment in profits for the first three quarters of 2020.
This, is according to the unaudited financial statement of the company from January to September, 2020.
The increment in profit is enormous especially when compared to last year’s profit of Ghs 688.6 million for the same period – January to September 2019.
The unaudited financial statement also indicate that voice, data, mobile money and digital revenues all grew by 12.1 per cent, 20.7 per cent, 27.3 per cent and 52.9 per cent respectively.
MTN Ghana has attributed the significant improvement in its profits to the increase in demand for digital and data services due to consumers dependency on, and usage of, digital options as a result of COVID-19.
Coupled with short-term cuts in expenses and cash preservation by the company as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite experiencing a surge in profit, the increase in demand for digital and data services placed significant pressure on MTN’s network infrastructure as it had to increase its spending on capital expenditure to Ghs 876 million.
This covered network capacity and infrastructure expansion projects to meet the needs of Ghanaians.
MTN Ghana’s total revenue for the period under review increased by some 19.3 per cent reaching Ghs 4.47 billion up from the Ghs 3.75 billion recorded in the same period for 2019.
Of the total revenue, service revenue for the period which excludes non-core activities like the sale of SIM cards and mobile devices, recorded Ghs 4.42 billion, up from the Ghs 3.72 billion recorded the year before.
MTN for the first three quarters also saw its subscriber numbers increase by 8.7 per cent to 23.4 million, its active data subscribers also increased by 8.3 per cent to 9.8 million, while active Mobile Money (MoMo) users increased by 4.3 per cent to 10.2 million.