Allan Kagenza: Welcome everyone to MTN Rwandacell's results presentation for the nine months ended 30 September 2026. I am Allan Kagenza, Investor Relations at MTN Rwandacell. On the call with me is Munza Ali, our CEO, and John Bugunya, our CFO. Munza Ali is going to take us through the business overview, and will then hand over to John Bugunya, who will take us through the financial review. John will then hand over to Munza, who will take us through the looking ahead, and then we will go into a Q&A session, and you will be able to type your questions in the questions tab. Thank you very much.
Monzer Ali: Thank you, Allan, and good afternoon to everyone joining us today. It is a pleasure to connect again with our shareholder, investor, and broader stakeholder community as we share another quarter of progress for MTN Rwandacell. I will start by giving you an overview of the business and key developments during the quarter, and as Allan mentioned, I will hand over to our CFO to take you through the financial performance in more details, and I will return afterward to share our priority for the remainder of the year and our outlook before we open the call for questions. Our strategic direction remain anchored around leading digital solution for Rwanda progress. For us, this is more than a theme. It reflect how we see our role in Rwanda, growing a strong and sustainable business while accelerating digital inclusion, expanding financial inclusion, and supporting the country's broader digital and economic ambition.
Monzer Ali: This quarter, our performance continued to demonstrate the strength and resilience of our business. We maintained good commercial momentum across our key platforms, supported by disciplined execution, continued customer growth, and increasing adoption of our digital and financial services. In connectivity, we see healthy demand. We are growing our customer base while deepening engagement across data, smartphone, 4G, home broadband. Importantly, growth in data traffic demonstrates that customers are not simply joining our network. They are increasingly using it as part of their everyday digital life. Fintech continued to be an important engine of growth for the business, and equally important, a platform for extending financial inclusion across Rwanda. We continue to strengthen the ecosystem through increased customer activity, merchant adoption, transaction volume, and transaction value. Our enterprise business also continued to play a very important role as we support businesses and institutions with increasingly digital solutions.
Monzer Ali: From a financial perspective, our focus remains on converting this commercial momentum into sustainable earnings and cash generation. We continue to maintain discipline across the business, with our performance reflected in service revenue, top line and bottom line, EBITDA profitability, and cash flow. If I were to leave you with one message before we go into the detail, it would be that MTN Rwandacell continues to deliver growth today while investing in the capability that will sustain that growth tomorrow. We remain focused on growing our core connectivity business, scaling Fintech, accelerating digital adoption, maintaining network leadership, and improving the efficiency of our operation. As we look ahead, our ambition remains the same, unchanged, to deliver sustainable growth and long-term value for our shareholders while continuing to make a meaningful contribution to Rwanda's digital progress. Maybe now I will move and I will take you through the macro.
Monzer Ali: The macro provides an important context for our performance. The overall economic backdrop in Rwanda remains very supportive. Real GDP growth was very strong at 9.7% in H1, and the full-year outlook remains above the 6.8% expectation. This gives us confidence in the underlying strength of the economy and domestic demand. At the same time, we are operating in a more challenging inflationary environment. Inflation reached 17.2% in September, largely driven by food, energy, and transport costs. The central bank has responded by tightening monetary policy, with the policy rate now standing at 8.75%. For us, this is very important because higher inflation can put pressure on household disposable income and consumer affordability. We remain very deliberate around pricing, value proposition, and execution, mainly in the mass market. On foreign exchange, we have seen a more encouraging trend.
Monzer Ali: The Rwandan franc depreciation against the USD has moderated to around 3.7% year on year, supported by stronger export remittance and the impact of the forex market reform. I will characterize the macro environment as a mix between the resilient, strong economic growth, and improving currency stability on one side, balanced against elevated inflation and higher interest rates on the other side. Against this backdrop, our priority is to remain disciplined, protect customer affordability, and continue investing in the growth area of data, enterprise, and Fintech. Despite the macro pressure, we continue to see healthy demand for our services and delivered solid commercial momentum during the quarter. Let me now take you through the key business highlights. We continue to see commercial momentum and resilient underlying demand across the business.
Monzer Ali: Our mobile customer base grew by 7.5% year on year to 8.7 million customers, giving us a large base for which to drive deeper digital adoption and engagement. Importantly, the story is not only about adding customers. We are seeing a clear improvement in the quality and digital maturity of our customer base. Active data customers increased by 15.9% to 2.9 million, while smartphones grew by 17.5% to 3.8 million. The migration toward higher-speed connectivity is also accelerating. Our 4G customer base increased by 40% year on year to 2.1 million customers. This adoption actually is translating into significantly higher usage. Total data traffic increased by 63.4% year on year, from 180 petabytes to 193 petabytes. That is a very important indicator for us because it demonstrates that customers are not simply connecting to the network. They are using it more intensively and increasingly adopting digital services.
Monzer Ali: We are also seeing very strong momentum in home broadband, where subscriber or customer base increased by 45.6% to 18,200 home connected. While this remains a small base, it represents an attractive area of future growth, as demand for reliable high-speed connectivity in home continue to develop. In summary, we are very pleased with the direction of our connectivity business. We are growing the customer base, accelerating 4G and smartphone adoption, driving substantial higher data consumption. This gives us confidence that data remain an important structural growth opportunity for MTN Rwandacell. This is not only about adding more customers, but we also see a clear improvement in the quality and digital maturity of our customer base. Turning now to Fintech, we continue to deliver strong and broad-based growth across the MoMo ecosystem.
Monzer Ali: Our active MoMo customer base increased by 12% year on year to 6.5 million users, demonstrating continued adoption and the important role that mobile financial services play in Rwanda. What is particularly encouraging is that activity on the platform is growing faster than the customer base. Transaction volume increased by 28% to around 2.6 billion transactions, while transaction value grew faster. It has increased by 42% to RWF 46.4 trillion. For us, that is an important indicator of the health of the ecosystem. It shows that we are not only adding customers, but customers are engaging more deeply and conducting more of their daily financial activities through mobile money. We also continue to expand the merchant ecosystem. Active merchants increased by 24.6% to around 720,000 active merchants, while MoMo Pay customers or subscribers grew by 15.6% to 4.2 million.
Monzer Ali: This is very important because our ambition is to continue evolving MoMo, mobile money, beyond the traditional transaction and build a broader digital financial services ecosystem with payment and advanced services, providing additional sources of future growth. This increased scale and engagement is translating into financial performance, with MoMo revenue growing by 29.1% year on year to RWF 141 billion. The Fintech story remains very compelling. We are growing the customer base, increasing engagement, expanding the merchant ecosystem, and successfully converting higher platform activity into revenue growth. We remain confident that Fintech will continue to be an important growth engine for MTN Rwandacell, while also supporting the country's financial inclusion and digitalization ambition.
Monzer Ali: We remain pleased as well with the trajectory of the Fintech business or Fintech platform, and our focus now is to deepen ecosystem participation, accelerate advanced services, and continue converting this growing level of engagement into sustainable revenue growth. Thank you, and I will now hand over to the CFO.
John Bugunya: Thank you, Moussa. Good afternoon, shareholders, investors, and stakeholders. Let me take you through the financial performance for the first nine months of 2026. The headline message is straightforward. We delivered strong growth, we converted that growth into better earnings, and we generated materially more cash. There are four messages behind these numbers. Our revenue growth is becoming more diversified. Our cost discipline is creating operating leverage. The quality of earnings and cash generation is improving, and we remain deliberate in how we allocate capital. You can see that progression clearly, where service revenue has increased by 20% year on year. EBITDA grew faster at 29.1%, and adjusted free cash flow increased by 57.6%. That movement from revenue to earnings to cash is the central financial message from these results. With that said, we will look at the key financial highlights. Let me begin with the top line.
John Bugunya: As I indicated earlier, the service revenue increased by 20% to RWF 259.4 billion. Importantly, that growth is increasingly being driven by data, digital financial services, which is exactly where customer behavior is moving. I will touch on the digital revenue growth of 16.7% to RWF 41.8 billion for the nine months to 30 September 2026. This is an encouraging acceleration in the third quarter, with data revenue growing by 21% in Q3. That performance is supported by real usage. As the CEO mentioned earlier, active data subscribers grew by 15.9% to 2.9 million, while data traffic increased by 63.4% to 193 petabytes. We are not only adding data customers, our customers are using materially more data. On voice, the picture is more mixed. Voice revenue increased by 2.9% for the nine months.
John Bugunya: This is a structural shift that we are seeing in the usage from traditional voice towards data-led communication. Our task is to manage that transition well, protect value in voice while capturing the much stronger growth that we are seeing in data consumption. Fintech, as mentioned by the CEO, remains the largest driver of growth, with Fintech revenue growing by 29.1% to RWF 141.2 billion. That being said, some of the structural developments in the market, as we communicated in our results release, is the eKash that we are monitoring very closely. For the results to 30 September 2026, the impact was not material, but it remains in early adoption phase. Over time, we will continue to monitor its impact on revenue generation, and we will be able to communicate further to the market at our full-year results release.
John Bugunya: Turning to earnings, EBITDA increased by 29.1% to RWF 112.7 billion, well ahead of the 20% growth in service revenue. That is the operating leverage in the business coming through. On EBITDA margin, as you will note, the margin expanded by 3.1 percentage points to 43.1%. This is above our medium-term guidance range of 40% to 42%. What is important here is that the improvement is supported by genuine revenue growth and cost discipline. However, we would not want to assume that this medium-term range has changed, but rather to continue executing on the initiatives that have driven this strong performance for the nine months. Profit after tax increased by 130.3% to RWF 30.3 billion for the nine months to 30 September 2026. The percentage is significant, but the underlying drivers are more important than the headline growth rate. First, we generated materially stronger EBITDA.
John Bugunya: Second, the net finance cost declined by 14.8%, reflecting lower debt balances following repayments under the syndicated loan, as well as lower interest rates after the refinancing of those facilities in July 2026. There is better earnings quality, stronger operating performance, combined with more efficient financing structure. Finally, I will talk about the adjusted free cash flow, which increased by 57.6% to RWF 97.6 billion. The way I would think about this is simple. Revenue grew by 20%, EBITDA grew by 29.1%, and adjusted free cash flow by 57.6%. The message here is that we are converting the strong commercial growth into cash at a much faster rate. Moving to the expense profile and free cash flow generation. Let me unpack the cost base and cash conversion in a little more detail. Total expenses increased by 13.9% from approximately RWF 130.7 billion to RWF 148.9 billion.
John Bugunya: That was materially below the service revenue growth of 20%. This is particularly important given the operating environment. Inflation remained elevated with pressure from food, energy, and transport costs, and we also continue to absorb higher energy costs across the business. Despite those pressures, our expense efficiency program and day-to-day cost discipline allowed revenue to grow faster than the cost base. There are two parts to the expense story. One is the cost of sales. As you will note, the cost of sales increased by 23.6%, but there is an important point behind that number. A meaningful portion of those costs is variable and scales with the business, particularly our Fintech ecosystem and transaction volumes as they continue to grow. So some of that cost growth comes with strong revenue growth that we are generating. Secondly is operating expenses that grew by 8.8%, substantially below revenue growth.
John Bugunya: That is where the most structural cost discipline is visible, including careful cost of discretionary expenses, as well as continued efforts to localize our costs, as well as reduce our forex exposure where practical. Overall, my message is revenue continues to grow faster than our cost base, which is what is driving the operating leverage and the margin expansion that I spoke about earlier. Here, the objective is not to spend less, it is to ensure that each additional franc of expenditure supports customer experience, growth, and long-term efficiency. That discipline allowed our EBITDA to grow by 29.1% and margins to increase from 40% to 43.1%. It also supported strong cash conversion, as I highlighted earlier, where you can see our adjusted free cash flow that is trending above, that has increased by 57.6%. So cash strengthens our financial resilience.
John Bugunya: It gives us the flexibility to fund our network investments, manage our balance sheet prudently, and build the capacity to deliver sustainable shareholder returns over time. The message from this slide is not simply that costs grew slowly, it is that that disciplined cost management is allowing more of the revenue growth to flow through to earnings as well as cash. Moving on to CapEx, as I close on the capital investments, as well as how that has trended over the nine months. CapEx, excluding leases, decreased by 40.5% to RWF 15.1 billion, and our CapEx intensity reduced from 11.6% to 5.8%. This does not mean that we have stepped back from investing in the network. It reflects the timing of expenditure, a disciplined prioritization, and improved investment efficiency. The mix of investments has also changed, as you will note.
John Bugunya: In the prior period, a greater share of our CapEx was directed towards the core network capacity, and you will notice that in 2026, we have prioritized the radio access network modernization, which accounted for approximately 54% of the nine-month CapEx spend. That is a deliberate allocation towards the part of the network that most directly supports coverage, capacity, customer experience, as data demand continues to grow. The strongest evidence of investment efficiency is the data traffic outcome. Data traffic increased by 63.4%, as mentioned earlier, to 193 petabytes, despite the lower level of CapEx, excluding leases. In other words, we are supporting significantly more usage while being more selective about when and where we deploy capital. However, caution again is treating the current CapEx intensity of 5.8% as the new run rate.
John Bugunya: It is below our medium-term guidance of 7% to 10%, and this is because of the phasing of the investment program. We expect CapEx intensity to align within that range of 7% to 10% in Q4 as further investment comes through. To bring the financial review together, growth is strong and more diversified, operating leverage is improving margins, earnings and cash quality are strengthening, and our capital allocation remains disciplined and focused on sustainable long-term results. That gives us a strong financial platform as we move through the final quarter of 2026. With that said, let me hand back to Mr. Monzer Ali, our CEO, who will take you through our priorities for Q4 and the medium-term outlook. Monzer, over to you.
Monzer Ali: Thank you, John. Let me close out by walking you through where we are taking the business from here, and then re-anchoring on guidance. As we look to the final quarter of 2026, our priorities are very clear. Q4 is fundamentally about disciplined execution and finishing the year strongly. Our first priority is to sustain the commercial momentum we have built across connectivity, Fintech, enterprise. We will continue to grow our customer base and revenue, accelerate smartphone penetration, scale home broadband through fiber and fixed wireless access, and continue improving the customer experience. Second, we remain committed to maintaining our network leadership. The significant growth we are seeing in 4G adoption and data traffic mean that the network quality and capacity remain critical. We will therefore continue to modernize and upgrade the network as the demand grow, while maintaining disciplined and value-based capital allocation, as the CFO mentioned.
Monzer Ali: Third is Fintech.
Monzer Ali: The opportunity is now increasingly about deepening the ecosystem and expanding beyond the traditional services. Our focus will be on driving adoption of advanced services, broadening our lending partnership, and progressively shifting the revenue mix toward higher-value services. Finally, we will maintain a very strong focus on operational efficiency. In the current inflationary and interest rate environment, cost discipline remain very important for us. We will continue our expense efficiency program, EEP, increase localization where appropriate to reduce forex exposure, and maintaining strong operating leverage and cash discipline. As we close 2026, the focus is not on changing the strategy. It is about executing the strategy with a greater intensity. We want to sustain growth, protect network leadership, deepen the Fintech ecosystem, and making sure that growth continue to translate into earning and cash generation.
Monzer Ali: That discipline is also important as we position MTN Rwandacell for sustainable growth beyond 2026. Now, let me conclude the outlook by coming back to our medium-term guidance, which we maintain. Our year-to-date performance give us confidence in the trajectory of the business and our ability to deliver against the commitment we have made. On service revenue, we delivered a growth of 20%, which is ahead of our mid-teens medium-term growth objective. This reflect the broad-based momentum we have discussed across connectivity, enterprise, data, Fintech, and our other growth area. Fintech continues to perform strongly, with revenue growth of 29.1%, comfortably within our ambition of sustained double-digit growth, and reinforcing Fintech as an important growth engine for the business. On profitability, our EBITDA margin of 43.1% is currently above our medium-term guidance range of 40% to 42%. This reflect the benefits of revenue growth, operating leverage, and continued cost discipline.
Monzer Ali: At the same time, we remain disciplined in how we invest. CapEx intensity currently stands at 5.8% compared with our medium-term guidance of 7% to 10%. The lower year-to-date CapEx intensity should not be interpreted as a reduction in our commitment to the network and to the expansion. As the CFO mentioned, we will continue to invest where we see customer demand and attractive return, mainly around modernization, capacity upgrade for 4G data, home connectivity, IT system, and also shifting toward AI. We are pleased with the progress we are making. The business is growing strongly. MoMo continues to scale, margins remain healthy, and we are maintaining discipline around capital and cash. We maintain our medium-term guidance for 2026 to 2028 and remain confident in our ability to create sustainable long-term value for our shareholders and other stakeholders. Thank you.
Monzer Ali: Now, I will hand over to Allan to take us through the Q&A.
Allan Kagenza: Thank you, Monzer. We are now going to a Q&A session. Please feel free to write your question in the questions tab. The first question goes to 361, to Monzer. Congrats on the results. When is the 2G and 3G switch-off expected? Please can you give us more information on the eKash system and how that will impact MoMo revenue for MTN? Thank you.
Monzer Ali: Thank you, Allan, and good afternoon once again to all our shareholders and investors. Thank you, Prashindran, for the question. On the network transition, the 3G shutdown is targeted by June 2027, while the timing of the 2G shutdown will depend on the successful completion of the 3G migration and ensuring that all impacting or impacted customers transition smoothly. On the eKash question, it is opening up the financial ecosystem for sure by enabling interoperability across banks, payment service providers, merchants, at very low pricing points. This might and could create some pressure on traditional transaction revenue, but equally, we expect it to expand the overall digital payment ecosystem, drive higher transaction volume, and accelerate the shift from cash to digital.
Monzer Ali: While there might be some short-term pressure on part of the traditional revenue pool, strategically, we see a larger open ecosystem as an opportunity for Fintech MoMo to innovate, deepen the customer engagement as well, and grow new financial services. Thank you.
Allan Kagenza: Thank you, Munza. The next question. How much of your OpEx is related to diesel costs? Move this to John.
John Bugunya: Thank you very much, Allan. Looking at our power cost, including grid cost, we would say it is between 15% to 18% of our OpEx. Thank you.
Allan Kagenza: Thank you, John. Next three questions from RSSB. You note that eKash had no material impact on Q3, although it was live for only about 11 weeks of the quarter. MoMo revenue growth also eased from 31% in H1 to 29% for the nine months. How much of that was due to eKash, and what net impact do you expect eKash to have on MoMo revenue growth for full year 2026 and over the medium term? In each case, do you expect it to be neutral, positive, or negative, and by how many percentage points? What share of MoMo revenue comes from the transfers now capped at RWF 20, and how much of any lost fee income do you expect higher volumes to recover?
Monzer Ali: Thank you, Nancy, for the question. First, on eKash, the moderation that you see from 31.3% MoMo revenue growth at H1 to 29.1% for the 9 months cannot be attributed entirely to eKash. The platform went live on 14 July. Adoption is still developing, and MoMo revenue still grew at 25.4% in Q3. For sure, for the year 2026, we might expect a negative pressure on revenue per interoperable transaction due to the low eKash pricing, but we are not providing a percentage point impact at this stage. Over the medium term, the outcome could be more balanced as lower pricing expand the digital ecosystem and higher volume partly might offset the yield pressure. We are also in our strategy, as you noticed, reducing dependence on traditional transfer by growing lending, saving, merchant, remittance, and other advanced services.
Monzer Ali: We will provide more quantified guidance with our full-year result. That is my answer on the eKash. Thank you.
Allan Kagenza: Thank you, Munza. Next question. Your 9-month EBITDA margin of 43.1% is above your reaffirmed 40% to 42% range. Has the expense efficiency program been completed? If not, how much in savings remain and by when? Does keeping that range mean you expect margin to fall from here?
Monzer Ali: Thank you. For sure, the expense efficiency program is not finished. Expense efficiency cannot end. It is an ongoing activity. by end of September, we had realized actually more than 70% against the original target, and our expectation to over-deliver on our expense efficiency target by end of 2026. Therefore, there is still remain saving potential in Q4. The 43.1% 9-month EBITDA margin reflects strong revenue growth and disciplined cost execution, as you saw in the number. Maintaining a guidance between 40% and 42% does not necessarily signal a material decline. It reflect prudence around the Q4 seasonality, inflation. We reported 17.2% inflation in September. Energy cost due to the geopolitical development, midterm election is over, so we are watching the geopolitical very closely and the impact on diesel price, and continued investment in the growth and network quality.
Allan Kagenza: Thank you, Munza. Finally, the last question from RSSB. You declared no dividend for full year 2025, so you could strengthen the balance sheet, and you committed to restoring payments over the medium term. With adjusted free cash flow up 38.7% to RWF 59 billion in H1 and 9-month PAT of RWF 30.3 billion, are you now in a position to resume dividends for full year 2026? If not, what leverage or cash flow level do you need to reach first, and what payout ratio should investors expect once dividends resume?
Monzer Ali: Thank you on that third question. The improvement in profitability and free cash flow is encouraging, and strengthen for sure our capacity to restore shareholder distribution. But that decision of declaring dividend remain with the board, and for sure will consider liquidity, debt, and lease obligation, regulatory requirement, investment needed, and the overall strength of the balance sheet. We have not communicated a specific leverage trigger or payout ratio, and I think it will be premature to introduce one today. But we remain committed to restoring sustainable dividend over the medium term, and we will update the market when the board complete its review. Thank you.
Allan Kagenza: Thank you. Next question from 237. Can you please speak in more detail on eKash? What are the specifics of the regulation that impact MoMo? Which revenue lines are directly impacted, and is this only for off-network transactions? That is to say, not MoMo to MoMo. I think this one was answered by Munza in the previous question. Next question, given the strong free cash flow, what are the implications for dividends? I think this one was also answered. The next question, what is driving the subscriber growth? Is this taking market share or are SIMs growing?
Monzer Ali: Thank you, Darren, for the question. On the customer growth, it is a combination, but importantly, we are taking market share. Our mobile customer base reached 8.7 plus million, and our market share improved, driven by customer growth outperforming competition so far. The growth is being supported by targeted acquisition, competitive proposition, and for sure, stronger retention. So, it is not only SIM proliferation at this stage. We also see improving quality of the base. Active data customer grew by 15.9%, ahead of overall customer growth, and smartphone grew by 17.5%. So, the market continue to grow, but MTN is growing faster than the market, and therefore taking share at the stage. And also, while we are deepening engagement with the base, I mean, we are trying as much as we can to modernize the base as well that we have. Thank you.
Allan Kagenza: Thank you. As we are done with the questions, I will hand over to Wanza. Closing remarks.
Monzer Ali: Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Allan, and thanks for all our investors, shareholders for their thoughtful questions and for the constructive engagement today. As we close the meeting today, I would like to thank our shareholders, investors, analysts, our board chair and board members, regulators, partners, and all our stakeholders, and MTN staff for your continued confidence in MTN Rwandacell. The first 9 months of 2026 have demonstrated the strength and resilience of our business. We have sustained good commercial momentum, grown our customer base, accelerated digital adoption, and continued to scale our MoMo Fintech ecosystem while maintaining a strong focus on profitability, cash generation, and disciplined investment. What is particularly encouraging is the breadth of the growth we are seeing. Connectivity remains resilient. Data continues to benefit from increasing smartphone and 4G adoption. Fintech continues to deepen its relevance in customer everyday lives.
Monzer Ali: We saw transaction value growing higher than transaction volume. Enterprise remains an important part of Rwanda's digital transformation. At the same time, we remain careful of the macroeconomic environment, particularly the pressure from inflation, September is 17.2%. We will continue to balance growth with customer affordability, cost discipline, and prudent capital allocation. As we move into the final quarter of the year, as I mentioned, our priority is simple, straightforward, to finish 2026 strongly and carry this momentum into 2027. We will remain focused on growing our core business, maintaining network leadership, accelerating digital and financial inclusion, scaling higher value services, and driving greater operational efficiency. We remain confident in the underlying opportunity in Rwanda, confident in our strategy, and importantly, confident in our ability to continue creating sustainable long-term value for our shareholders and all our stakeholders.
Monzer Ali: Thank you once again for your time, your engagement, your continued support of MTN Rwandacell. Nicyo gihe, murakoze cyane.
Allan Kagenza: Thank you, Wanza. For any questions that have not been answered, we will share them on email with you. Thank you.
