By It was a resounding bells of a successful performance for the Airtel Africa Plc brand as recorded in its nine-month period ended 31 December 2024, which was released today.
According to the pan-Africa telecoms operator, it grew its revenues of $3,638m by 20.4% in constant currency but declined by 5.8% in reported currency as currency devaluation continued to impact reported revenue trends while experiencing accelerated growth with Q3’25 revenue growth of 21.3% in constant currency and reported currency revenue growth of 2.5%.
Across the Group, mobile services revenue grew by 18.8% in constant currency, driven by voice revenue growth of 9.8% and data revenue growth of 29.5% just as mobile money revenue grew by 29.6% in constant currency.
The Group reported that the EBITDA for the nine-month period declined by 11.9% in reported currency to $1,681m with EBITDA margins of 46.2% impacted by increased fuel prices and the lower contribution of Nigeria to the Group. However, following initial successes of its cost efficiency programme, EBITDA margins expanded from 45.3% in Q1’25 to 46.9% in Q3’25.
In Q3’25, profit after tax benefitted from an exceptional gain of $94m (net of tax) following the naira and Tanzanian shilling appreciation. However, over the nine-month period ending 31 December 2024, profit after tax of $248m was impacted by $57m of exceptional derivative and foreign exchange losses (net of tax).
According the report, total customer base grew by 7.9% to 163.1 million just data customer penetration moved up with a 13.8% increase in data customers to 71.4 million while data usage per customer increased by 32.3% to 6.9 GBs, with smartphone penetration increasing by 5.2% to reach 44.2%.
Airtel Africa stated that its continued investment to increase financial inclusion across her major markets contributed to an 18.3% increase in mobile money subscribers to 44.3 million with a transaction value in Q3’25 increasing by 33.3% in constant currency with annualised transaction value of $146 billion.
Commenting on the report, Sunil Taldar, chief executive officer said, “We have delivered an improvement in both the operating and financial performance in the last quarter driven by our refined strategy which is focussed on delivering great customer experience across all touch points.
“An increasingly important component of this is to provide a best-in-class network, digitise and simplify the customer journey. Our focus on speed and quality execution is enabling us to unlock the substantial opportunities for growth across our markets and business segments, where demand remains significant, resulting in a further acceleration of constant currency revenue growth to 21.3% in the most recent quarter.”
He noted that the company remains committed to investing for the future by expanding her distribution and network to ensure it capture significant growth opportunity on offer adding that despite the challenging environment for many of her customers, it continues to see strong demand for her services.
The Airtel Africa CEO stated that the scale of data traffic growth across her markets is testament to the investments “we have made and the relentless focus on our strategy to create value for all our stakeholders.
“As we have communicated previously, our cost efficiency programme continues to deliver EBITDA margin improvements, with a further expansion of margins in Q3’25. We continue to focus on further margin improvement. Furthermore, our capital structure remains robust with just 8% of OpCo debt in foreign currency – a substantial improvement over the last year. This, together with continued confidence in the outlook for the business, has enabled the Board to announce a second share buyback programme, which will return up to $100m to shareholders.”
