MTN Nigeria Accelerates to 19.7% Service Revenue Growth in Q3

MTN Nigeria's service revenue accelerated to 19.7 per cent growth in the third quarter — up from 13.2 in Q2 and running at 21.6 per cent by September — making the Nigerian operation the single fastest-growing material business in the Johannesburg-listed group, whose Q3 update shows earnings expanding faster than revenue across the pan-African portfolio.

Group service revenue rose 17.2 per cent to R176.2 billion for the nine months in constant-currency terms, while group earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation expanded 22.9 per cent to R86.0 billion, lifting the margin 2.8 points to 47.9 per cent. Q3 alone brought group EBITDA growth of 20.1 per cent. "Q3 was our strongest quarter of 2026," group chief executive Ralph Mupita said, crediting the acceleration to Nigeria and Ghana, which he identified as the portfolio's growth engines.

The numbers behind Nigeria's re-rating

MTN Nigeria's nine-month figures, released on the NGX at the end of October and reflected in the Q3 commentary, show why investors treat the local operation as a genuine earnings compounder rather than a leveraged currency bet. Service revenue rose 23.7 per cent to N4.586 trillion; EBITDA surged 36.8 per cent to N2.624 trillion for a 56.9 per cent margin; profit after tax jumped 55.3 per cent to N1.165 trillion for an EPS of N55.6. Free cash flow rose 57.5 per cent to N1.2 trillion, enough to fund capex of N864.8 billion — up 14.2 per cent — and still deleverage and return cash.

The customer engine is compounding underneath. Subscribers rose 10.9 per cent to 94.7 million; active data users grew 12 per cent to 57.2 million; and mobile money revenue grew 102.2 per cent over nine months — a fintech business scaling at rates telecom incumbents in most markets never see. The company's airtime-advance product re-relaunched with multiple partner lenders turned service revenue growth of 78.5 per cent quarter-on-quarter. Data traffic climbed 27.3 per cent to 22,754 petabytes as network investment caught up with the demand.

The margin story investors missed

Q3 EBITDA expanded 32.8 per cent in Nigeria with a 58.7 per cent margin, 5.8 points better than the prior-year quarter — the reverse of the margin compression the market had priced into a business exposed to naira depreciation, statutory levies and measured network capex. In a market where operators have absorbed two wholesale price escalations and a full complement of tower costs and spectrum amortisation, that trend is the single most important datapoint in the Nigerian telecom sector's year: the levers (pricing gains in data, subscriber growth, fintech growth) remain broadly in place, and they exceed the draglines from currency and tax.

The group's fintech disclosure underlines how the revenue mix is shifting from pure connectivity. Fintech transaction value rose 36.9 per cent to $512.5 billion across the group, with 70.3 million MoMo users and 181.7 million active data users among 323 million total customers. Nigeria's contribution to that mix is proportionally the largest and fastest-growing, underpinning the group's strategy of positioning mobile money as a full financial-services rather than wallet product line.

Ghana and the rest: rising currency power everywhere

Ghana's Q3 service revenue jumped 35.7 per cent with EBITDA up 42.1 per cent — evidence that the hyperinflation-era revenue reallocation pattern is not unique to Nigeria, and that West African markets broadly are generating enough telecom revenue growth to offset currency erosion. South Africa remains a stabiliser: Q3 EBITDA rose 7 per cent on flat revenues, marking the operation's cost discipline against a stagnant market.

The IHS transaction, where the tower-unit acquisition is awaiting only final processes after shareholders approved and Nigerian and COMESA regulatory clearances were secured, is expected to close by year-end. That deal will knit infrastructure economics tighter into MTN's Africa operations and clear the path for further network monetisation in the Nigerian market.

What this means for Nigeria's own market

For Nigerian investors and policymakers, the Q3 update settles two debates. First, telecoms can carry the earnings-expansion baton currently held by banks: with regulatory headwinds and economic stress being absorbed, MTN's domestic margin expansion suggests the sector can stay a yield-and-growth staple in the equity market, particularly at price points that reflect the company's improving FCF profile. Second, the growth is enriching the state's stakes well beyond license fees: MSTN's 9M 2026 PAT of N1.165 trillion is taxable income, dividend-generating, and an evidence book that the country's largest telecom scale business can fund itself, invest at $1 billion-a-year rates in real naira terms, and deleverage simultaneously.

A group whose net debt stood at only 0.2 times EBITDA, with R2 billion of a R6 billion buyback already executed and R22.4 billion of free cash flow, has the capital to keep investing through Nigeria's network buildout cycle. That includes the data-centre, fintech and fixed-broadband infrastructure the country's digital economy needs — the rare context in which a group's African expansion and Nigeria's domestic growth that gives corporate Nigeria a market statement about risk and returns have simultaneously aligned.