MTN Made $200m Loss in 2016 – The Company's Worst Record In 22yrs

South African telecoms giant MTN revealed that it made a whooping $200m loss last year 2016 which is the company’s worst record in 22 years after suffering a huge fine in Nigeria and currency challenges in key African markets including South Africa and Nigeria.

In 2016, the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) imposed N330bn regulatory fine on the telecommunication giant over its failure to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered SIM cards.

In its report, the company said the action of NCC contributed to its loss. In their words...

“MTN Group’s financial results for 2016 reflect the most challenging year in the company’s 22-year history,” a statement by the company read.

“The performance in Nigeria was hurt by the forced disconnection of 4.5 million customers by the government a year ago, regulatory penalties and the weakness of the naira against the dollar.

“In South Africa, lower demand for mobile-phone contracts weighed on earnings.

“Towards the end of 2016 our two largest operations (South Africa and Nigeria)… began to show signs of a turnaround following an extended period of under-performance.”

It is worthy to recall that MTN reported profits of 20.2 billion rand ($1.6bn) before tax for 2015 business year, the revenue was fractionally up for the year at 146.9 billion rand ($11.3bn). While in August 2016, the company revealed its first-ever half year loss.

MTN said it expects to add 8.3 million new users in the 2017 financial year. It said its total subscribers increased by 3.3% or 7.7 million to 240 million in 2016. This is a press release.