Jeremiah Opoku: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to MTN Ghana’s Nine-Month 2026 Results Presentation. I would like to thank everyone for joining us today. My name is Jeremiah Opoku. I am the senior manager for Investor Relations at MTN Ghana. I am joined today by Stephen Blewett, our CEO, Antoinette Kwofie, our chief finance officer. We have Shaibu Haruna, chief executive officer for MobileMoney Fintech Limited, and he is joined by Susan Yawson, chief financial officer for MobileMoney Fintech Limited. We also have with us Roy Mutooni, who is group Executive for Investor Relations.
Jeremiah Opoku: Today’s presentation will be led by Stephen and Antoinette, after which we will have a Q&A session by the entire team on the call. Stephen will begin with our key messages and highlights of our nine-month performance, after which he will review the operating environment and take us through our operational performance and some key strategic developments. Antoinette will then present the financial review, covering our revenue, earnings performance, and some capital investments over the period.
Jeremiah Opoku: Stephen will return to conclude with our strategic priorities, outlook for the remainder of 2026, and the medium-term guidance. After the presentation, as I mentioned, we will have a Q&A session, which I will moderate using questions submitted through the portal. I entreat everyone to kindly put in your questions as the presentation goes along. The presentation is available for download from the call portal and the investor relations section on our website. With that, I will kindly hand over to Stephen to begin the presentation. Thank you.
Stephen Blewett: Thanks, Jeremiah. Good afternoon, morning, evening, depending where everyone is today. Today, we are looking at our nine months 2026, and I will start off with that shortly. We appreciate, first of all of you taking the time to join us today as we discuss MTN Ghana’s performance for the first nine months of 2026. We delivered another strong quarter in Q3 2026, sustaining the momentum from the first half of the year, despite evolving market conditions.
Stephen Blewett: Broad-based growth across our connectivity and fintech businesses drove service revenue growth of 35.7% year-on-year to GHS 8.2 billion in Q3, taking service revenue for the first nine months of the year to GHS 23.2 billion, up 33.5% year-on-year. These results reflect the strength of our commercial execution, our disciplined operational management, and continued progress against our Ambition 2030 priorities.
Stephen Blewett: Let me start with the key messages from our performance for the first nine months of 2026. We continue to see, excuse me, healthy growth across our customer base, with particularly strong momentum in Q3. During the quarter, we added approximately 1.5 million subscribers, 678,000 active data subscribers, and 619,000 active MoMo users. This supported year-on-year growth of 12.7% in mobile subscribers to 34.3 million, 16.1% in active data subscribers to 22 million, and 6.9% in active MoMo users to 18.9 million.
Stephen Blewett: Our growing customer base, together with deeper adoption and engagement across our services, continues to provide a strong foundation for growth. Importantly, our growth remains broad-based and increasingly diversified. Data revenue grew by 44.5%, digital revenue by 98%, and mobile money revenue by 24.4%. Supported by the strong performance delivered in Q3, service revenue growth accelerated to 33.5% year-on-year for the first nine months of the year, reaching GHS 23.2 billion. That top-line momentum translated strongly into profitability.
Stephen Blewett: EBITDA increased by 40.6% to GHS 14.3 billion, with our EBITDA margin expanding by 3.1 percentage points to 61.5%, reflecting the benefits of strong revenue growth, disciplined cost management, and a positive operating leverage. Strong earnings growth translated into significantly improved cash generation during the period. Profit after tax increased by 43% to GHS 7.8 billion, supported by strong EBITDA growth, slower growth in depreciation and amortization, and lower finance costs.
Stephen Blewett: Equity-free cash flow rose by 170% to GHS 5.4 billion, strengthening our capacity to deliver continued shareholder returns while retaining the financial flexibility to fund our strategic growth priorities. At the same time, we are continuing to invest for future growth. The award of the additional spectrum in the 700 MHz and the 3 GHz bands strengthens our capacity to support growth, growing data demand, enhance network quality and customer experience, enable the rollout of 5G, and expand the opportunity in home broadband.
Stephen Blewett: Together, these results demonstrate continued progress against Ambition 2030 strategy. We remain focused on scaling the opportunities across connectivity, fintech, and our broader digital platforms, while maintaining disciplined execution and capital allocation to support sustainable long-term growth and shareholder value. With those key messages in mind, let me turn to the operating environment and then take you through our performance in greater detail.
Stephen Blewett: Turning to our financial highlights, our performance for the first nine months demonstrates how the strong top-line momentum across the business is translating into higher earnings, profitability, and ultimately shareholder returns. Starting with growth, service revenue increased by 33.5% year-on-year to GHS 23.2 billion, reflecting broad-based growth across our connectivity and fintech businesses. An important fact about this number is that commercial momentum strengthened during the third quarter, with Q3 service revenue growth of 35.7%.
Stephen Blewett: Data remained a key growth engine during the period, with revenue increasing by 44.5% to GHS 13.5 billion, while mobile money revenue grew by 24.4% to GHS 5.4 billion. This strong revenue performance, together with disciplined cost management and operating leverage, translated into EBITDA growth of 40.6% to GHS 14.3 billion. Importantly, EBITDA grew ahead of service revenue, with the EBITDA margin expanding by 3.1 percentage points to 61.5%. The strength of the operating performance also flowed through to the bottom line.
Stephen Blewett: Profit before tax increased by 47% to GHS 11.4 billion, while profit after tax grew by 43% to GHS 7.8 billion. Earnings per share consequently increased by 42.9% to GHS 0.586. Our strong earnings performance and cash generation have continued to support shareholder returns. During the third quarter, the boards of Scancom PLC and MMFL each declared a dividend of GHS 0.03 per share, reflecting our continued commitment to delivering timely and attractive shareholder returns while retaining the financial flexibility to invest in future growth of the business.
Stephen Blewett: Overall, these results demonstrate the strength of our operating model. Strong and diversified revenue growth, disciplined cost management, and positive operating leverage are translating into higher earnings and sustainable shareholder value. Let me now unpack the environment in which we deliver this performance before taking you through the operational results in more detail. Turning to the operating environment, Ghana's macroeconomic conditions remain generally more favorable than the prior year, although we experienced some fluctuations during the third quarter.
Stephen Blewett: Overall, the improving macroeconomic backdrop continued to provide a more supportive environment for business and consumers. The most significant improvement has been in inflation. Average inflation moderated to 4.2% in the first 9 months of 2026, compared to 17.3% in the corresponding period last year. Year-on-year inflation also declined to 5.2% from 9.4%. While some inflationary pressures emerged during Q3, the overall inflation environment remains significantly improved, helping to ease pressure on consumer purchasing power.
Stephen Blewett: On the currency, we experienced periods of volatility during the third quarter, reflecting both domestic and external market dynamics. Nevertheless, currency performance remained considerably more stable than in previous periods. The cedi depreciated by 12.1% against the USD during the first 9 months, moving from GHS 10.45 to the dollar in December 2025 to GHS 11.71 at the end of September. Let me now turn to our operational performance and show how we continue to execute against these opportunities.
Stephen Blewett: As I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we continue to execute strongly against our commercial and strategic priorities during the period. Before I take you through our operational performance in more detail, I would like to spend a moment on another important dimension of how we create value, our contribution to the communities and broader society in which we operate. During the quarter, we continued to advance our shared value agenda through initiatives aimed at delivering tangible social, environmental, and economic outcomes.
Stephen Blewett: These efforts reflect our commitment to going beyond our core operations to support communities, broaden economic participation, and contribute to Ghana's long-term development. As I mentioned earlier, creating shared value remains an important part of how we think about our role in Ghana and the long-term value we seek to create for our broader stakeholders. During the third quarter, we continued to advance this agenda through initiatives aimed at delivering tangible social, environmental, and economic outcomes.
Stephen Blewett: Starting with our communities, we commissioned an ICT, robotics, and STEM center at New Asafo M/A Basic School, which will provide approximately 270 pupils with practical digital and science skills. We also committed GHS 2.5 million to flood relief efforts through the Multimedia Group and NADMO. We continue to support economic inclusion and enterprise development.
Stephen Blewett: The MTN Foundation announced GHS 20 million in grants to support between 100 and 150 micro and small and medium enterprises across the Bono East, and Ahafo regions, with a focus on helping business scale, broaden economic participation, and support job creation. In addition, our first sustainability workshop for SMEs equipped approximately 120 businesses with practical tools to strengthen resource efficiency and sustainability readiness. Environmental sustainability also remains an important area of focus.
Stephen Blewett: More than 4.7 million customers have transitioned to biodegradable SIM cards, helping to eliminate approximately 10,288 kilograms of plastic waste. At the same time, installed solar capacity under Project Zero reached just over 3 megawatts, 3.02 megawatts, helping to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel-based power. We also commenced restoration work on the Chipa Forest Reserve, with 1,666 trees earmarked for planting across 2 hectares of degraded land.
Stephen Blewett: Beyond these initiatives, our contribution to Ghana's development continues through our broader economic footprint. During the nine-month period, we paid GHS 9 billion in direct and indirect taxes and GHS 533.6 million in fees levies to government agencies, supporting public finances and national development priorities. These initiatives demonstrate what creating shared value means to us: reducing our environmental footprint, strengthening communities and businesses, broadening economic participation, and contributing meaningfully to Ghana's long-term development.
Stephen Blewett: With that broader perspective on the value we are creating, let me turn to our operational performance and take you through the key drivers of growth during the period. Let me touch briefly on an important regulatory development during the quarter, which also represents a significant investment in the future capacity of our network.
Stephen Blewett: During Q3, we received notification from the National Communications Authority of the award of spectrum in the 700 megahertz and the 3 gigahertz bands for 5G and mobile broadband services. The award comprises 2 by 20 megahertz in the 700 megahertz band and 1 by 150 megahertz in the 3 gigahertz band, with the licenses valid for 15 years. This is an extremely important strategic milestone for us. The additional spectrum will complement our existing spectrum assets and strengthen our ability to meet the growing demand for high-speed connectivity and data-centric services across Ghana.
Stephen Blewett: Importantly, the investment is not simply about introducing 5G. As data consumption continues to grow, the additional capacity will enable us to enhance network quality and customer experience while strengthening the capacity and resilience of our network. Following issuance of the licenses, we will deploy the spectrum to support the rollout of 5G services and these broader network objectives. It also creates a significant opportunity for our home broadband proposition.
Stephen Blewett: The additional network capacity will enable us to extend high-speed connectivity to more households and broaden our addressable home market, supporting our ambition to scale home as an important growth opportunity within connectivity. We are currently finalizing the required formalities and payment obligations associated with the license acquisition. Importantly, the USD 202 million spectrum acquisition cost is already reflected in our free cash flow outlook. The payment of the license acquisition does not change our FY26 free cash flow and dividend outlook.
Stephen Blewett: Overall, we see this as an important investment in the next phase of our growth, strengthening the network capacity required to support Ghana's growing digital connectivity needs while positioning us to capture opportunities across data, 5G, and home broadband. With that, let me now turn to operational performance and take you through the progress we've made across our key growth engines during the period. Our results demonstrate the strength and increasing diversification of our growth engines across connectivity, digital, fintech.
Stephen Blewett: Starting with data, revenue increased by 44.5% year-on-year to GHS 13.5 billion, supported by sustained demand and deeper customer engagement. Active data subscribers increased by 16.1% to 22 million, while average monthly data consumption grew 36.8% to almost 20 gigabytes, 19.8 gigabytes per active user. The growth reflects continued smartphone adoption and increased usage in digital services, including video streaming.
Stephen Blewett: Performance was also supported by portfolio optimization, CVM interventions, and continued growth in home broadband connections and subscriptions. As a result, data's contribution to service revenue increased to 58.1% from 53.6% in the prior year period, highlighting the continued evolution of revenue mix towards data-led services. Voice also remained resilient. Revenue increased by 7.6% to GHS 3.1 billion, supported by portfolio optimization and targeted commercial interventions aimed at improving monetization. Our total subscriber base also increased by 12.7% to 34.3 million.
Stephen Blewett: At the same time, we continue to see the structural evolution of customer communication behavior towards VoIP services. Consequently, voice contributed to service revenue decline to 13.3% from 16.5%. This is consistent with the increasing contribution from data-led revenue streams. Our digital business continued to scale strongly, with revenue increasing by 98% to GHS 642 million.
Stephen Blewett: This was driven by continued growth across gaming, video, and content services as customers increasingly adopted our digital lifestyle products, supported by product innovation, enhancements to our customer propositions, and strategic partnerships. Finally, MoMo maintained strong momentum, with revenue increasing by 24.4% to GHS 5.4 billion. Active users grew by 6.9% to 18.9 million, while transaction volumes increased by 27.5%, reflecting increased digital payment and adoption, and broader participation across the ecosystem.
Stephen Blewett: Importantly, growth continues to cross both core wallet and advanced financial services. Basic service revenue increased by 22.2%, while advanced services grew faster at 28.7%, supported by greater adoption of digital payments, lending, and other value-added services. Taken together, this performance reinforces the resilience and diversification of our business model. We are seeing growth not only from expanding our customer base, but increasingly from deeper adoption, higher usage, and engagement across our connectivity, digital, and fintech platforms.
Stephen Blewett: With that overview of our growth engines, let me now turn to the financial performance and investments we are making in our network and platforms to support this growing demand and sustain the quality of customer experience. For that, we will hand over to Antoinette, who will take you through the financial performance, investment, and cash-generated outcomes for the first nine months of 2026. Antoinette, over to you.
Antoinette Kwofie: Thank you very much, Stephen, and a good morning, afternoon, or evening, dearest investors, depending on which part of the world you are in. As Stephen has highlighted, we delivered a strong and diversified operational growth during the first nine months of the year. This momentum, together with our disciplined cost and capital management, translated into higher earnings, improved profitability, and stronger cash generation. I will now take you through our financial performance in a bit more detail, beginning with the income statement before covering our investment and cash flow performance.
Antoinette Kwofie: Turning to the income statement, I would particularly highlight the strength of our Q3 performance and the momentum we carried through the period. Total revenue in the Q3 alone increased by 35.7% year-on-year to GHS 8.2 billion for the quarter, bringing revenue for the first nine months to GHS 23.2 billion. Importantly, Q3 service revenue also grew by 35.7% compared with a 32.3% growth at the H1, lifting our nine-month service revenue growth to 33.5%. The strength of the quarter was also evident in EBITDA. Our EBITDA for the quarter increased by 42.1% to GHS 5 billion, ahead of revenue growth.
Antoinette Kwofie: This resulted in an EBITDA margin of 61.1%, an expansion of 2.7 percentage points year on year. For the nine-month period, EBITDA increased by 40.6% to GHS 14.3 billion, with a margin of 61.5%. This continued to demonstrate positive operating leverage, with revenue growth and our focus on operational efficiency supporting stronger profitability even as we continued to invest in network operations, customer experience, and commercial initiatives.
Antoinette Kwofie: Moving down further on the income statement, our net finance costs declined by 15.3% in the third quarter, providing additional support to earnings. The strong EBITDA growth remained the principal driver of our earnings, whilst lower growth in depreciation and amortization and lower finance costs provided additional support below EBITDA. This helped our profit after tax increase by 43% for the nine-month period. Overall, Q3 reinforces the momentum in the business.
Antoinette Kwofie: Revenue growth remained strong, EBITDA continued to grow ahead of revenue, margins remained robust, and this translated into strong earnings growth. Now, let me turn to our investment and cash flow performance and how we continue to balance investment for future growth with strong cash generation and shareholder returns. We continue to allocate capital in a disciplined manner, balancing the requirements of the business today with the investments needed to support future growth.
Antoinette Kwofie: During the first nine months, we invested GHS 2.6 billion in ex-lease CapEx, representing an intensity of 11.2% compared with 18.7% in the corresponding period last year. Total CapEx, including right-of-use assets, was GHS 3.2 billion, with total CapEx intensity of 13.6%. Our investments were primarily focused on network modernization, capacity expansion, and digital platforms. All these were to support growing demand for data and digital services while improving service quality and the scalability of the business.
Antoinette Kwofie: Importantly, the lower level of CapEx during the period should be viewed in the context of disciplined capital allocation rather than reduced investment ambition. As highlighted earlier, the spectrum award and our plans around 5G, network quality, and coverage will see us step up our investments as we position the business for sustainable long-term growth. We are looking beyond today to see how we can guarantee the growth of the business going forward. At the same time, the strength of the underlying business continued to translate into strong cash generation.
Antoinette Kwofie: Cash generated from operations increased to GHS 14.6 billion from GHS 10.8 billion in the prior year period. This, together with our disciplined capital allocation, contributed to free cash flow increasing by 96.9% to GHS 7.4 billion from approximately GHS 3.8 billion in the prior year period. Overall, our performance demonstrates the strength of the underlying business and our continued ability to balance disciplined investment for future growth with strong cash generation and shareholder returns. We are committed to maintaining this performance as we move forward.
Antoinette Kwofie: With that, I will now hand over back to Stephen, who will take us through our strategic priorities, our outlook, and the medium-term guidance. Over to you, Mr. CEO.
Stephen Blewett: Okay. Thank you, Antoinette, for those words, and for taking us through this. Let's now look at some future outlook and takeaways. Our results for the first 9 months, together with the underlying fundamentals of the Ghanaian market, give us confidence in the outlook for the business. Let me now turn to our strategic priorities, our outlook for the remainder of 2026, and our medium-term guidance.
Stephen Blewett: At MTN, we remain constructive on the operating environment in Ghana, notwithstanding continued uncertainty in the global environment arising from geopolitical developments and trade-related tensions. We expect the domestic operating environment to remain relatively stable, supported by continued progress on inflation management, fiscal consolidation, and foreign exchange stability. Against this backdrop, our focus remains firmly on executing Ambition 2030 with discipline and positioning MTN Ghana to lead Ghana's digital future.
Stephen Blewett: There are significant structural opportunities ahead of us, and our priorities are clear. Within connectivity, we see significant headroom for further growth, underpinned by subscriber growth, increasing usage, rising smartphone penetration, digital adoption, and Ghana's youthful population. We will continue to scale data, accelerate home broadband adoption, and expand our enterprise proposition while capturing the significant opportunity in the home market. We will support this growth through continued investment in network capacity, coverage, and quality.
Stephen Blewett: The additional spectrum award in the 700 MHz and 3 GHz bands will further strengthen our network capacity over time, enabling the rollout of 5G, supporting growing data demand, and creating further opportunities to scale our home broadband proposition. In fintech, our focus remains on deepening financial inclusion, expanding digital payment adoption, growing the ecosystem, and strengthening partnerships while continuing to scale advanced services for consumers and SMEs to support the next phase of growth.
Stephen Blewett: Beyond these core growth engines, we will continue to expand our digital service portfolio and invest in the capabilities required to support the evolving needs of consumers, homes, and businesses. Across all these areas, customer experience remains central to our strategy. We will also continue to leverage AI to support growth and productivity while pursuing operational efficiencies, maintaining discipline, and selective capital allocation.
Stephen Blewett: As we grow, we will continue to advance our force for good agenda, with a focus on financial inclusion, digital access, renewable energy, enterprise development, and initiatives that contribute to Ghana's long-term socioeconomic development. As we look at the remainder of 2026, our strong 9-month performance and the current operating environment gives us confidence that full-year service revenue growth will track in the low to mid-30% range.
Stephen Blewett: Beyond 2026, given the significant moderation of inflation and the evolving macroeconomic environment, we may revisit our medium-term economic assumptions to ensure they appropriately reflect the environment in which we are operating. Our medium-term margin expectations remain unchanged. As we enter the important investment phase and step up investment in 5G, network quality, and coverage, we expect EBITDA margins to normalize towards the mid to high-50% range over the medium term.
Stephen Blewett: Importantly, this normalization is by design, reflecting deliberate reinvestment from a position of strength to strengthen network capacity, enhance customer experience, and support sustainable long-term growth while maintaining a structurally strong margin profile. We remain confident in the underlying strength of the business. Our resilient operating model, strong balance sheet, and multiple growth platforms provide a solid foundation to execute our strategy and deliver strong real growth over the medium term and sustainable long-term value for our stakeholders.
Stephen Blewett: As we look ahead, our priorities remain clear: sustain the growth momentum, invest deliberately in the capacity required for the future, continue improving customer experience, and maintain the financial and capital discipline that supports sustainable growth and attractive shareholder returns. Thank you for your time and your attention. I will now hand over back to Jeremiah for the Q&A.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you, Stephen and Antoinette, for the presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session. Let me begin by reading the first question. Voice revenue grew 27% year-on-year on portfolio optimization. How much of that is pricing, and is that repeatable in 2027? MTN guides to mid to high 50s over the medium term on EBITDA. How quickly do margins step down from 61%, and what does the CapEx profile look like with the USD 202 million spectrum? Maybe let me take the third part of the question before we take answers. Mobile money reaccelerated to 26.5%, despite the float rate cut.
Jeremiah Opoku: What drove the pickup in advanced services, and how did float income trend in Q3? I think we have those questions in two parts, the fintech-
Stephen Blewett: Yeah
Jeremiah Opoku: and then the voice.
Stephen Blewett: Okay, thanks, Jeremiah. So, three questions, one voice-related, one for EBITDA, and one for MoMo. I will take the voice one. I see there are also a few people asking the voice one, so I will spend a bit of time on that, take you through that. Antoinette, if you can take the EBITDA, and Shaibu, the MoMo question. All right. I will take you through the voice one. As I said, I have seen a few people asked about voice. The improvement in our voice is deliberate, and I have mentioned this before. It is around portfolio. Sorry, I do not know if someone is talking.
Stephen Blewett: The voice revenue improvement is deliberate. It is built around portfolio optimization, and also some commercial interventions, and it is done on purpose to reverse the longer-term structural transition that you have from data to voice services. I have mentioned that already, and I have mentioned it before. We obviously, as a percentage contribution, you saw as a percentage contribution of voice to our total revenue, it declines. It will continue to do that, and we have said that many times. It will continue in that direction, and that is expected because that is part of our Ambition 2030.
Stephen Blewett: You have got a more movement to digital data services from voice. The recovery within voice is a reflection of those optimizations. How did we do that? You just need to understand a bit of history. Our Pulse product, which is our youth product used a lot by a lot of customers, one of our most popular voice products. During 2025, we had a migration of Pulse customers towards digital channels, which meant that to get the Pulse product, you had to go through our MyMTN app.
Stephen Blewett: Then a lot of customers who used that moved towards a lower ERM propositions, which impacted our voice monetization. In 2026, we took and looked at that portfolio in more detail, and we put in optimization measures, like including changes to how you purchase the bundles, and how we monetize those bundles, and what you can do with them. That is to protect that voice contribution overall. We began to see the effect of these interventions in Q2. You would remember there was a slight change you would have picked up.
Stephen Blewett: Voice revenue increased from GHS 916 million in Q1 of 2026 to GHS 1 billion in Q2, and now to GHS 1.15 billion in Q3. That resulted in the Q3 year-on-year revenue growth of 27%, and it lifted the nine months by about, or growth to 7.6% compared to H1, which had the decline of 1.4%. That is a big shift. Looking ahead, our objective is to optimize, continue the optimization we are doing, and protect the contribution from voice, whilst recognizing, as I said, that with smartphone penetration, we had 70% smartphone penetration.
Stephen Blewett: As smartphone penetration increases, there is a migration towards VoIP, we will see a change in customer behavior. Data and digital services are really our principal long-term connectivity growth engines, whilst optimizing voice. We see that optimization continuing into the next quarter. With that, let me hand over to Antoinette, please.
Antoinette Kwofie: Thanks very much, Stephen, and thank you to the team that asked the question on how quickly do our margins step down to the guided 50s, and what does the CapEx profile look like with the 5G spend? Our medium-term guidance, that is three to five years currently, has been mid to high 50s for the last, at least for the last year. We are not changing that. We know that currently our guidance is in the early 60s, and we have said that we intend to reassess the medium-term guidance by the end of the year.
Antoinette Kwofie: This is to enable us look at the new three-year period, that new three to five-year period, look at how the macros are panning out, and make sure we reflect the significant moderation in inflation and other levers that we see in the market. In terms of how quickly it steps down to the mid to high 50s, we would clarify that when we reissue our guidance at the end of the year. What does the 5G investment do to our CapEx profile?
Antoinette Kwofie: Obviously, our spectrum leases will increase, and that will be an incremental CapEx. However, as we said in our announcement, and as I mentioned when I spoke about our financial performance, this has been factored in our outlook, and we do not expect our commitment on cash generation and dividend repatriation to be affected or to be changed as a result of this payment. Just to clarify. Thank you.
Shaibu Haruna: Good. Thank you. If I may go, Stephen, it is okay?
Stephen Blewett: Sorry. Yeah, sorry, Shaibu Haruna. Go ahead.
Shaibu Haruna: Okay. No, thank you. I think the question was around the drivers of the re-acceleration of the MoMo revenue. I think a number of things, if you look at the shape of our operation, we saw improvement in terms of our customer numbers, where we grew more than 600,000 within the quarter. Then if you go deeper into our merchant ecosystem, we also expanded our merchant base quite significantly. We added in excess of 20,000 new merchants into the ecosystem. So we have driven a lot of ecosystem activity, which is stimulating the growth that you are seeing from a revenue standpoint.
Shaibu Haruna: But a key element that we are seeing come through is strong performance on the person-to-person leg. As a matter of fact, a lot of them are also person-to-business transactions that you see on that rail. As I mentioned, the payment ecosystem also expanded, and we are seeing quite some traction with all the commercial activities that we have put in market to stimulate growth in that area. This, among others, is driving the kind of momentum that you are seeing. I have to say that our lending portfolio has also seen quite a significant growth.
Shaibu Haruna: We continue to see a strong year-on-year growth on the lending portfolio as well. Thank you.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you, Stephen, Antoinette, and Shaibu for the responses. What is the contribution of float interest to MoMo revenue in the nine-month, and how does this compare to prior year? While we are on that, how many MoMo users are on the app versus USSD, and what is driving the net additions and active MoMo users in the quarter?
Stephen Blewett: Yeah, I think Shaibu, that is yours.
Shaibu Haruna: Okay. I missed the first part of the question, but I will take the second one. Jeremiah, do you want to retake that for me?
Jeremiah Opoku: Yes. The first part of the question was, what was the contribution of MoMo float interest in 2026 versus prior year?
Shaibu Haruna: Okay. I think what I would say on this is that we are seeing a deceleration on the MoMo contribution of escrow revenue to our business. We have seen a year-on-year significant drop. Whilst last year, it did contribute somewhere in the region of around 5%, we have seen it decelerate to about 2% this year. Quite a significant in terms of contribution to the revenue portfolio. Most importantly, is the fact that we have also managed to grow other areas, and I think Stephen alluded to the fact around diversification of our portfolio.
Shaibu Haruna: In as much as we are challenged on the float side, what we have also done is to accelerate our play on the lending ecosystem, which has also seen a growth in terms of the contribution of lending to our revenue portfolio. We have also seen good growth on the payment rail, which has more than compensated for what we lost from an escrow contribution point of view. So, it is a question of portfolio rebalancing. Even as you see the cash-out trend also reducing, we have also seen good growth coming through in terms of person-to-person activity.
Shaibu Haruna: So, we have a very healthy portfolio, and we are able to adapt to changes that we see within the market. Thank you.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you. Thank you, Shaibu Haruna, for the response. Next question. Are you going to continue to protect voice, or will you let it naturally convert to data?
Stephen Blewett: Okay, is this that question? I thought there was another one coming. We have said on multiple occasions that if you look at our Ambition 2030 strategy, which clearly demonstrates our direction of travel, the direction of travel is into these different platforms. The number one priority is pushing the digital future. So, actually, we need to keep pushing the data services. That growth is important, that we continue to see growth in that area. We are sitting at 19.8 gigabytes per customer, and you see the significant growth. It continues to grow every quarter. So, that is showing the direction of travel.
Stephen Blewett: It is always good remembering, like I say, we have got 70% smartphone penetration. So, that means there is still 30% still to come. There are two parts of why we believe data will grow and continue to grow, and voice as a percentage contribution, people will migrate. First of all, as you start to grow your smartphone penetration, people use data more. Our services and products are data-focused and led, whether it is in our digital area or in our enterprise, et cetera, et cetera. So, they will drive it. Secondly, as people purchase smartphones, they migrate up the smartphone ladder.
Stephen Blewett: So, you may end up with a 3G, 4G device, and then you end up with a 4G, 5G device, and that changes your profile, your consumption, everything that goes along. I think the final point, which I mentioned in the presentation, we have a youthful market. As the market shifts, the youth market adopts data as its primary starting point. So, that is also always good to remember in terms of where voice is going relative to the total service revenue and the direction of travel. Thanks.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you so much, Stephen. I have a couple of questions on CapEx, so I probably will put them together. Essentially, I think the question asked about the key drivers for the slowdown in CapEx over the period. Given our plan for the 2026 year, should we expect a catch-up in Q4, or will we defer the CapEx spend to next year?
Antoinette Kwofie: Thank you, Jeremiah. Sorry, I thought you were asking some more questions. So, I will take that. CapEx, our guidance for the year was GHS 4.6 billion. That guidance still remains. A lot of our CapEx is in the deployment of towers, and some of those take a lot of time, and that is why it appears to be a slowdown. However, a lot of them are coming on stream now, and we believe that by the end of the year, there will be a catch-up. So, our guidance for the year at GHS 4.6 billion has not changed at this point in time. Thank you.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you, Antoinette, for the response. Next question. What kind of pressures are you seeing on data pricing?
Stephen Blewett: I assume that's for me. Pressures on data pricing. Let me just talk to data. We're not seeing too much pressure on data pricing as yet. I think an important thing to understand, and let everyone just remember this, just to remind everyone. You will recall, and this is one of the reasons when you're comparing Q3 2025 to Q3 2026, you have to take these things into account. As many of you may recall, we gave away additional volume in Q3 of last year, so that stimulated your ERGB, your gigabytes per customer. That's something that's the last time when we did some, let's say, additional value.
Stephen Blewett: What we did do in Q3, we did drop some of our fiber pricing, and optimized our entire portfolio there, so that customers had a broader choice, an easier entry point. That was to stimulate our home market. Our home fiber market is growing really well, and effectively, we lead in the fiber market in Ghana now. Of course, once we start rolling out the 5G, we then have an opportunity to do fixed wireless access for home as well. So, some exciting times ahead there.
Stephen Blewett: But our view is, around data, is that customers operate at different bands within data, and customers are always They will work effectively with your price point as long as you're addressing and ensuring your quality is good. So, we focus on ensuring we have good quality and give great service. That's how we price for data.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you, Stephen, for the response. Okay. Looking at the acceleration in growth rate, how do you expect 5G to impact revenue outlook, given amortization rate could be higher due to new spectrum? Can the growth be enough to compensate in the short run, or should we look at the medium term?
Stephen Blewett: I can take some of it, and I will let Antoinette, if you can just dive in at the end as well around amortization and what we will do with 5G. I think the important thing about 5G for us, and I think this is important to understand, once you acquire your 5G, as the question implies, you need to now spend on activating the 5G on your network. So, you get the license, you then need to put the equipment. The very important point to understand, we got 700 MHz and 3 GHz bands. On the 700 MHz, our network is currently 700 MHz ready.
Stephen Blewett: So, once we have done the formalities and paid and done all the rest of the administrative things, we will quickly be able to launch the 700. But you need the 700 with the 3 GHz because it is capacity versus coverage. We need both. But you can get the first one up and running. In terms of monetization and all the plans which we have shared with you already in all of our guidances, include where we believe we will grow with 5G. 5G's opportunity has two areas that I would like our dear investors to understand. The first is this. We have got 9% of our base who uses 5G, who has 5G-enabled phones.
Stephen Blewett: They occupy 19, one nine, 19% of the volume on our network. So the first is an opportunity cost. As MTN Ghana, we focus on how can we do things from an optimization point of view. So that means you can move 19% of the volume onto 5G immediately. That creates capacity on 4G, which is quite important, because we are moving a lot of our customers, and we have done quite well in that, onto voice over LTE, and that means you are using 4G for that, so that we can move people up the line from 2G, 3G, to 4G and 5G. So, that is the first thing around 5G and how it builds into our plans.
Stephen Blewett: The second thing is, we have plans which have been built into all our guidance, as we have shared with you, in that the FWA monetization is good. We have not been doing any additional fixed wireless access for the last couple of years because the 4G network will take a lot of strain if we do that. So with 5G, we have the opportunity to roll out 5G FWA quickly across many areas, and we are already geared up for that.
Stephen Blewett: We have the people to do it, and we know the areas we want to do. So, those plans are already in place, and our teams know. So when we put our business case together for 5G, all these things were taken into account when we looked at our modeling of the returns. Antoinette, do you want to just talk, add anything to that, maybe around the amortization, et cetera?
Antoinette Kwofie: Thank you, Stephen. The only thing I would like to add is that the 5G spectrum we got had a 15-year tenor, so we will be amortizing it over a 15-year tenor. But the business case, like Stephen said, has different product lines, et cetera, and we do expect that our business case timelines and payback period would be met. When you say short run, a short run could mean a number of things. So I would say, we did put together a business case, and we believe that the payback period would be met, and perhaps even we might do slightly better than our payback period. Thank you.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you.
Antoinette Kwofie: Gemma. Gemma, your voice is muffled.
Stephen Blewett: Yeah, we cannot hear you.
Jeremiah Opoku: Sorry. Okay. Sorry about that. Hello? Yes. The next question.
Antoinette Kwofie: Yeah, you are clearer now.
Jeremiah Opoku: on 5G is, when should we expect 5G services to be launched in Ghana? Also, given the strong Q4 in 2025, should we expect same for Q4 2026, or will there be some seasonality effects in Q1 2027? Also, will your EBITDA margins be impacted by higher oil prices or overall tower cost?
Stephen Blewett: Yeah. Let me take the first two questions on the 5G. I suppose most of you would understand this. We will not specifically communicate exact date we will do 5G because we have competitors. I can say this, that MTN Ghana will be ready to launch some of the 5G services on the particular spectrum lines I spoke about in the near term. That is what I can say around the launch. In terms of seasonality effects, yeah, we do have seasonality effects. Every Q4, we have a certain increase because obviously people are traveling, we have visitors coming in. We also have people getting bonuses and spend like that.
Stephen Blewett: It is also our 30th anniversary, so that is currently running at the moment. It is the 30th anniversary of Scancom PLC, so we are running some incentives around that. That will continue. But from an MTN Ghana point of view, we always try and see how we can stimulate usage. I think it's important understanding as we head into Q1 of 2027, we are currently building 500 new sites. I've mentioned this before. Of that, there's almost 300 already done. The other 200 will be completed before the end of the year. So, those additional 500 sites give you coverage, but also coverage does stimulate usage.
Stephen Blewett: So, that will have a positive impact on our business as we go towards the end of Q4 and then going into Q1 of 2027. I'll leave the last point to Antoinette. Oh, no. I think it was among my question, wasn't it? Sorry.
Antoinette Kwofie: Gemma, can you repeat the last
Jeremiah Opoku: So the question was, given the strong Q4 in 2025, should we expect the same for 2026 or
Stephen Blewett: I've answered that.
Antoinette Kwofie: I think Stephen answered that. Stephen answered that. There was something on margins.
Jeremiah Opoku: Yes. It was whether margins were impacted by the oil prices or tower cost.
Antoinette Kwofie: Okay.
Stephen Blewett: Antoinette.
Antoinette Kwofie: All right. No. The current margins we have are a result of all our operating expenses, and that includes the impact of oil costs on our fuel and our diesel usage on our towers. It is an all-encompassing one. Our forward-looking forecast also includes what our estimates are on fuel costs, oil price changes, its impact on fuel costs, and its subsequent impact on our tower costs. That is what I would say.
Jeremiah Opoku: Okay
Antoinette Kwofie: Yeah. Thank you.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you, Antoinette, for the response. We will have two last questions, which will be, how many MoMo users are on app versus USSD? Can you comment on the potential entry of Orange into the Ghana market, as mentioned in recent media stories?
Stephen Blewett: Well, let me take the Orange one. Shaibu, if you can take your question on MoMo users afterwards. There is a lot of speculation around Orange entering the market. Obviously, at this stage, we have not heard any official communication from anyone about that, but we are watching that potential entry with interest. I will say this. As MTN Ghana, we have obviously faced competitors over the year. We have faced Airtel and Tigo, and we faced Vodafone, and then Vodafone becoming Telecel. There is institutional knowledge in our DNA around facing competitors.
Stephen Blewett: Having said that, we take every potential new entrant, whether it is Orange or another one, very seriously, and we adapt accordingly. We have a team within our business that focuses on emerging risks and new competitive environments. The upside of that is it ensures that we are continuously scanning the environment and making changes to be ready for such eventualities. From an MTN Ghana point of view, that is something that we actively look at and are doing currently. With that, I will hand over to Shaibu.
Shaibu Haruna: Thank you very much, Stephen. On the question on the app usage, first and foremost, let me say that the numbers for app usage is not publicly disclosed. But I can give a directional sense of how it is looking like. If you look at our customer base, we have around 70% of that base who have a smartphone, and for that matter, opportunity to migrate them onto the app for a better user experience. We will build between the two apps, MyMTN and MoMo app, we will build a very strong foundation. The momentum on a year-on-year basis is very, very strong.
Shaibu Haruna: We continue to innovate in that space to offer customers intuitive services, and begin to move them into the app environment. Just to highlight the fact that USSD remains the main, significantly the dominant channel of usage. But we are seeing a lot of high-value transactions happening for the app users. So, it gives you a sense of the kind of experience that they have, and the trust that they have in doing higher-value transaction through the app channel.
Shaibu Haruna: So, from a unique volume basis, you see that the USSD is high, it is extremely high, but you see that in terms of the value that is being transacted, we are seeing quite a significant improvement in terms of the app journey. So, we are building quite a good momentum and a good loyal customer base in that app environment. Thank you.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you, Stephen and Shaibu, for the response. So, we will take the closing remark from Stephen to conclude the call.
Stephen Blewett: Yeah. Thanks, Jeremiah. To all our investors on, I think these are a couple of points that I would be remiss if I did not make them. The results are excellent. We, as a team, count things at this time of the year in days. You probably all know that. We have passed the 300-day mark, so at MTN Ghana, everyone is totally focused on delivering a Q4 where we would be proud of. So first of all, we have to think of how good our staff have been, how hard and dedicated. These results come as a result of them working every day to deliver them.
Stephen Blewett: Of course, also our board, who gives us strategic direction, and support from our group. Ralph has just been here, and he is coming twice more this year. So, I think as a collective team, this is why you see the results you see, and it bodes well for the rest of the year. So, thanks everyone for being on the call. Thanks.
Jeremiah Opoku: Thank you, Stephen, for that. Thank you to everyone who was with us throughout the call today. I think if you have any other questions that did not come through the Q&A portal or you feel was not answered, just reach out to me after the call, and I will be glad to assist. Also, we will make available the transcript for today's call on the investor relations portal on our website next week, so just look out for that. With that, I would like to thank everyone, and you can disconnect from the call.
