Airtel Africa Plc on Thursday published its Audited Reports for the year ended 31 December 2023.
The telecom giant reported revenue of $5.26 billion for the 12 months period, up by 11.5% from $4.71 billion reported the previous year.
Profit after tax was $750 million, a decrease of 0.7% from $755 million reported the previous year.
Commenting on the result, Olusegun Ogunsanya, Chief Executive executive Officer, of Airtel Africa stated thus:
“Over the last year, the operating environment has been challenging in many ways, yet our strategic focus on providing reliable, affordable and accessible services across our markets has enabled us to sustain our top-line growth momentum.
The resilience of our underlying EBITDA margins has shown the effectiveness of our operating model, despite significant
inflationary and foreign exchange pressures. Strong customer and ARPU growth over the year demonstrates that demand for our services remains very strong and gives us the confidence to continue investing to support ourfuture growth potential.
Over the year, we invested $500m on additional spectrum, including 5G, across many of our OpCos which, combined with our capex, will underpin our growth ambitions. Despite this investment, and driven by a disciplined capital allocation policy, our balance sheet remains strong and has been further de-risked over the last year by the prepayment of $450m HoldCo debt in July last year. Currencies across our footprint have been under pressure, and the impact from the revaluation of our foreign currency denominated liabilities provided some headwinds in the last financial year. While currency devaluation is not in our control, we have plans to continue to mitigate its impact by growing our revenues at a faster pace than devaluation, with double-digit revenue growth in reported currency delivered this year and as we continue to reduce our foreign currency exposure across our balance sheet.
Our six-pillar strategy continues to provide the basis for stakeholder value creation by facilitating continued expansion of our services to enhance both digital and financial inclusion across Africa. This strategy will continue and will be underpinned by our sustainability strategy as articulated in our Sustainability Report published in October 2022.
I am pleased with this year’s performance and wish to thank all our customers, business partners, governments and
regulators for their support and our employees for their consistent contribution to the business’ success.
The macro-economic outlook remains volatile, but we are well positioned to deliver against the growth opportunities these markets offer, with a continued focus on margin resilience.”