Olufemi Adeyemi 

Airtel Africa has announced a 7.9% increase in customers and reported $3.6 billion in revenue in their latest results.

Airtel Africa has announced robust revenue and customer expansion, supported by investments in data, mobile money, and network infrastructure, even in the face of currency volatility. Strategic execution has propelled significant operational and financial progress. A new share buyback program has also been initiated.

The overall customer base expanded by 7.9%, reaching 163.1 million. The number of data customers saw a significant rise of 13.8%, totaling 71.4 million. Additionally, data usage per customer surged by 32.3%, averaging 6.9 GBs, while smartphone penetration grew by 5.2%, now at 44.2%.

Our ongoing efforts to enhance financial inclusion in our markets have resulted in an 18.3% increase in mobile money subscribers, bringing the total to 44.3 million. In the third quarter of 2025, the transaction value rose by 33.3% in constant currency, with an annualized transaction value of $146 billion.

The growth in data ARPU was 15.0%, and mobile money ARPU increased by 11.8% in constant currency, contributing to an overall ARPU rise of 12.0% year-over-year in constant currency.

Customer experience remains central to our strategy, supported by continued network investments during this period. In alignment with our strategic goals, data capacity across our network has increased by 20.8%, facilitated by the deployment of 2,850 sites and approximately 2,600 kilometers of fiber.

Financial performance

Revenues reached $3.638 million, reflecting a 20.4% increase in constant currency, although reported currency showed a decline of 5.8% due to ongoing currency devaluation affecting revenue reporting. Strong operational execution contributed to another quarter of growth acceleration, with Q3’25 revenue growth of 21.3% in constant currency and a 2.5% increase in reported currency.

Within the Group, mobile services revenue increased by 18.8% in constant currency, fueled by a 9.8% rise in voice revenue and a 29.5% surge in data revenue. Additionally, mobile money revenue saw a robust growth of 29.6% in constant currency.

For the nine-month period, EBITDA fell by 11.9% in reported currency to $1,681 million, with EBITDA margins at 46.2%, affected by rising fuel costs and a reduced contribution from Nigeria. Nevertheless, following early achievements in our cost efficiency initiative, EBITDA margins improved from 45.3% in Q1’25 to 46.9% in Q3’25.

In Q3’25, profit after tax benefited from an exceptional gain of $94 million (net of tax) due to the appreciation of the naira and Tanzanian shilling. However, for the nine-month period ending December 31, 2024, profit after tax totaled $248 million, impacted by $57 million in exceptional derivative and foreign exchange losses (net of tax).

Earnings per share (EPS) before exceptional items decreased from 7.1 cents in the previous period to 6.2 cents, primarily due to increased costs related to the ATC contract renewal, which did not affect cash flows. Basic EPS improved to 4.4 cents compared to a negative 1.6 cents in the prior period, largely reflecting reduced derivative and foreign exchange losses in the current period.

Capital allocation

Capital expenditures totaled $456 million, representing a 7.8% decrease compared to the previous period. The full-year capital expenditure guidance remains in the range of $725 million to $750 million as we persist in our investments aimed at future growth.

Airtel has been actively decreasing its exposure to foreign currency debt, having reduced it by $739 million over the past year. Additionally, 92% of our operating company debt (excluding lease liabilities) is now denominated in local currency, an increase from 79% a year earlier.

Leverage has risen from 1.3x to 2.4x, primarily due to a $1.2 billion increase in lease liabilities resulting from the extension of our tower lease agreements with ATC, as previously disclosed. To better represent the Group’s financial market debt position and mitigate volatility linked to lease accounting under IFRS16, the Group has introduced 'Lease-adjusted leverage' as an additional alternative performance measure (APM) for the current period. Lease-adjusted leverage rose from 0.7x in the previous period to 1.1x as of December 31, 2024, reflecting the effects of increased debt and a decrease in lease-adjusted EBITDA due to currency devaluation impacts (see page 6).

After completing the initial $100 million share buyback, we announced in December 2024 the initiation of a second buyback program, which will return up to $100 million to shareholders. This decision underscores the Board’s confidence in ongoing growth prospects, the robustness of the balance sheet, and the steady cash generation at the holding company level.

Sunil Taldar, the CEO, shared some insights on the latest trading update: “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.

We remain committed to investing for the future by expanding our distribution and network to ensure that we capture this significant growth opportunity on offer. Despite the challenging environment for many of our customers, we continue to see strong demand for our services as we enable connectivity and facilitate access to the digital economy. The scale of data traffic growth across our markets – an increase of 49% over the last year – 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.

The recent signs of currency stabilisation in some markets and the recent decision from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) regarding tariff adjustments in Nigeria are encouraging and signal a more stable and supportive operating environment. While challenges remain, these developments provide a firm foundation for growth and improved market conditions.”