Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us on this call to discuss MTN Group's trading update for the quarter to the end of March 2023. My name is Thato Motlanthe, Head of Group Investor Relations. On the call with me is Ralph Mupita, our Group CEO, as well as Tsholofelo Molefe, our Group CFO. Also joining us on the call is Charles Molapisi, the CEO of MTN South Africa, as well as Dineo Molefe, who is the CFO of MTN South Africa. Just a quick reminder that our trading update was published this morning on the JSE. It is posted on our website on the investor relations page. I trust that you've also had a chance to look at the Q3 releases from our listed OpCos who reported over the past couple of weeks.
For today's call, it will be my pleasure shortly to hand over to Ralph and Tsholo, who will provide an overview of the business and financial performance and then give you some outlook remarks. We can then go into the open up for the Q&A. You should have a space on the webcast page to enter your questions, which I will read out at the time. Finally, just to note that this call is scheduled to wrap up in about an hour's time, which is when we'll close the call. With that, let me just hand over to Ralph for his comments.
Thank you very much, Thato, and a very good afternoon from me as well. I trust that everybody's keeping well. I appreciate you taking the time to join us on this call. Before we get into it, let me just start by acknowledging the situation in Sudan. You may have read about the fighting that broke out in mid-April, which is affecting families and communities in the country. We extend our condolences to all those who have been impacted, and as MTN, we are seized with ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees, customers, partners, and the communities we serve in Sudan. For the call, we will follow broadly our usual sequence. I'll first set the scene with our operating context. Second, I'll cover our operating momentum. Third, some comments on our strategic progress.
Tsholo will come in with topic four, which is our financial overview, and I'll come back with topic five, which is conclusion and some outlook comments. If I turn to the quarter under review, we have highlighted the past few reports that we are navigating quite a challenging set of conditions across our markets. We are resilience of our business and the execution of our teams across our footprint, which enables us to continue to deliver relatively solid results. We continue to see challenging macroeconomic, geopolitical, and regulatory conditions in 2023. The blended inflation across our footprint remained elevated and averaged 18.5% in the Q1 compared to 11.5% in Q1 2022. Interest rates increased during the period of central banks acted to curb inflation.
High inflation and interest rates weighed on consumer spending power and impacted business activity. In South Africa, the load shedding challenges persisted with approximately 90 days of load shedding in Q1 2023 compared to 14 days in Q1 2022. As we guided previously, this impacted quite acutely MTN SA's network availability and business performance in the period. In Nigeria, you'll have heard from Karl and Modupe speak last week about the shortage of cash in the economy due to the Naira redesign policy. Of course, this over and above the broader macro factors and it impacted the ability of our customers to transact both in the GSM and FinTech businesses there. Coming on to operating performance. As mentioned, we were encouraged by the business ability to sustain top-line growth and manage inflation pressures in Q1.
This supported by ZAR 6.4 billion of CapEx investment into our network and platforms in the period. We delivered constant currency service revenue growth of 15.1% at the group level, which was in line with our medium-term guidance. MTN Nigeria, MTN Ghana, and MTN Uganda all delivered double-digit service revenue growth. MTN SA delivered positive service revenue growth of 1.3% against the severe impacts of load shedding that I mentioned earlier. Group EBITDA growth was resilient at 11% despite the effects of much higher inflation. The EBITDA margin was 43.9%. I'll leave it to Tsholo to unpack some of the color around our financial performance. Our commercial performance was quite pleasing.
In terms of overall connectivity business, our subscriber base grew by 5.2% to 290.6 million customers, despite load shedding in South Africa and SIM registration headwinds in Ghana. Our active data subs were up 11.9% to 140.4, which helped us to underpin 19.3% year-on-year growth that we saw in our data traffic. On the FinTech side, we are super focused on rapidly expanding our ecosystem. Active MoMo users increased by 5.2%. This was impacted by Nigeria, where the user base was impacted by the cash shortage situation in the country. The agent and merchant bases both up strongly by 27.1% and 103% respectively.
This is really enabling the continued robust expansion in the FinTech transaction volumes by nearly 40% in the quarter. We are pleased with the continued evolution of what we refer to as the structurally higher demand for our data and FinTech services that underpin our medium-term growth thesis. On our strategic progress, we continued the engagements on a bespoke basis with select potential strategic minority investors in the group's FinTech platform. Our focus is really to ensure the commercial agreements that ensure that any strategic minority investment also supports the acceleration of growth of our FinTech business over the medium term, and we're working through that diligently. On current progress and issues outstanding, we anticipate concluding this and have an outcome of the process within Q2 2023.
You may have seen our sends this morning that we've made an announcement relating to our portfolio optimization focus within Ambition 2025 and the ongoing assessment of our portfolio focused on improving returns, reducing risks, and efficient capital allocation. In this regard, we are evaluating an orderly exit of three small operations in West Africa, namely MTN Guinea-Bissau, MTN Guinea-Conakry, and MTN Liberia. We have received an offer from Axian for our equity interest in the operations, which we are looking at. Naturally, a process of this nature will entail extensive engagement with stakeholders, and we're still in the early stages of that process. We will keep you, all our stakeholders appropriately updated, as we progress, you know, on this possible transaction.
I'm going to pause here and hand over to Tsholo for a financial overview before I close at the end with, outlook and, concluding remarks. Tsholo, over to you. Tsholo, I think you are muted.
Thank you very much, Ralph. Good afternoon to everyone. I'm pleased to run you through some of the key financial highlights for the Q1. Ralph gave you some of the headline numbers, which just to emphasize, were quite pleasing given ongoing challenging trading conditions in our market. Just to recap on the group results, as usual, the numbers are in constant currency. Service revenue, we saw an increase of 15%. EBITDA in a growth of 11%. The EBITDA margin was lower by 1.6 percentage points to 43.7%, really impacted by the growth in the business, particularly the much higher inflation in our footprint. We are pleased, however, to have contained cost growth through the ongoing focus on our expense efficiency program.
A resilient outcome overall, and this was underpinned by the investments that we continue to make. We deployed CapEx of R6.4 billion in the quarter, which is really the lifeblood of our network and platforms. As you know, some of our key OpCos have already reported and held their calls, but I will just provide a high-level overview of the numbers. Starting with Nigeria, we saw a solid set of results with growing with service revenue growing by 20.4%. This was in line with the medium-term guidance. Good growth across the key revenue segments of voice, data, as well as FinTech in Nigeria. This was achieved in an environment with much higher inflation and rising interest rates. There was also the cash shortages, as Ralph indicated, which is now behind us.
On the Southeastern Africa region, we saw strong double-digit service revenue growth of 17.7% year-on-year. Again, sustained growth in the key segments and a good subscriber growth overall. Overall, increase in EBITDA margin was slightly up by 0.1 percentage points to 46.1% in the quarter, which is pleasing given the challenging conditions. With regards to the Western Central Africa region, also managed to deliver double-digit service growth of 10.8%, with MTN Ghana which does index quite highly in that mix, growing by 23.2%. EBITDA margin in the region declined by 1.7 percentage points to 38%. The main key drivers here were MTN Ghana, which has experienced a big spike in inflation, as we all know.
MTN Côte d'Ivoire also impacted the overall trend. They experienced power supply disruptions impacting network availability as well as the performance of the business. If I unpack some of the details for South Africa, service revenue was up 1.3% under pressure due to load shedding impacts on network availability. This is over and above the tough macroeconomic environment impacting the consumer. Voice was particularly hard hit by the disruptions and was down 16% year-on-year in the period, although data revenue growth was comparatively resilient with a growth of 9%. On the consumer side, we saw prepaid being 5% lower, while postpaid revenue grew by a solid 3.3%, with data fairly resilient in both segments, as mentioned.
In the enterprise business, we saw top-line growth of 11.7, 11.4%, driven by growth in data and new wins in the ICT environment. In the wholesale business, we saw an increase of 14.9%, which was underpinned by continued progress in the national roaming strategy there. While still nascent, we are seeing an encouraging growth in the volume traffic from Telkom on our network. MTN SA's EBITDA was 6.5% lower, with a 3.7% decline in EBITDA margin, now at 36.2% on a reported basis. Excluding the once-off gain on disposal of SA Towers in the period, this would have been 36.1%. This really reflecting the impact of load shedding on top line as well as on our costs.
The higher management fee that we have reported on previously also had a negative impact with an impact of about 0.7 percentage points on margin. In terms of our financial resilience overall, I touched on the expense efficiencies a little bit earlier, and we are particularly pleased with the entrenched resilience of our balance sheet and liquidity at position overall. Consolidated group net EBITDA and net debt to EBITDA held steady at 0.3 times and comfortably within our covenant thresholds. All core leverage ticked slightly up to 0.9 times compared to the 0.8 times at the end of the year, and this was largely due to Forex movements.
A very strong liquidity position at HoldCo with headroom at ZAR 57.2 billion, of which ZAR 20.5 billion was in cash and the balance in committed and drawn facilities. We upstreamed a total of ZAR 1.6 billion in cash from our OpCo in this quarter, as well as an additional ZAR 978 billion from Nigeria, coming from the capital proceeds from service one of the localisation. You may have picked up that the group elected for a scrip dividend option for the financial year ended 2022 dividend at MTN Nigeria's AGM on the 18th April this year. This will increase the group's effective shareholding from 75.6% to 76.2% after the finalization.
As we indicated to you, with the at the financial year-end results 2022, we view to the scrip option as providing optionality and flexibility given the greater challenges currently to secure foreign exchange to upstream. We believe this will provide a more favorable short-term store of value for our investment as we manage the nearer term challenges in upstreaming cash from the country. On the same reasoning, therefore, we also consider a scrip dividend option from MTN Ghana, conditional upon its approval at the upcoming AGM at the end of this month. Thank you very much, Ralph, and I'll hand over to you at this point.
Thanks very much, Tsholo. Just some concluding remarks and outlook from my side. First point, overall challenging environment, you know, remains with us in the near term, but the MTN Group is positioned to manage this through its resilient business model, strong balance sheet and disciplined strategy execution. The second point I'd like to make is that the elevated inflation environment necessitates implementing selective price increases across our portfolio to ensure that operations generate sufficient cash flow to fund future CapEx and growth. We are engaging with regulatory authorities on this, and we'll continue such engagements in the next few quarters. In South Africa, the post-paid tariff increase has been implemented in April 2023, and that should underpin improved top-line growth in the coming quarters.
Price ups in selective prepaid plans and other portfolios, as well as network resilience, support recovery of the top line and improving EBITDA margins towards our medium-term guidance by H2 2023. We will continue with our network resilience program to deal with the load shedding and look to accelerate it as we've been seeing very pleasing results with our self-help plan. As we communicated with our FY 2022 results, In H1 will remain a challenging period, with recovery in H2 driven by improved network availability, the price increases that I mentioned, and Cell C moving traffic as it shuts down its own network and more traffic roaming on our network. In Nigeria, focus will be on enhancing network capacity, accelerated broadband coverage to sustain growth in data traffic.
The business has started to recover from the effects of the cash shortages that we saw in quarter one, which is very pleasing. Tariff increases are key to help overcome effects of inflation. We are engaging the authorities, as I mentioned, in Nigeria on the tariff increases that we'd like to see on both voice and data. On MoMo PSB, we're prioritizing the development of the agent and merchant ecosystem to support accelerated growth of the wallet base. Tsholo spoke to financial resilience. We will continue to drive our expense efficiency program to mitigate inflationary pressures on our cost base. As communicated previously, we're also looking carefully at opportunities for liability management for non-ZAR debt, should market conditions allow.
As previously mentioned, we are engaged with tower companies across some of our OpCos on improving NLA terms as contracts come to an end. On our strategic priorities, we'll continue to work to finalize the agreements with selective strategic partners to introduce potential minority investment into Group FinTech structure. We're also in the early stages of exploring the potential orderly exit of the group from Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Conakry, and Liberia, and we will update all stakeholders as we progress on this process. We are well progressed on our exits of Afghanistan. We've seen very positive engagements with the regulatory authorities, and we're anticipating to complete this by the end of early H2 2023.
In terms of the CapEx outlook, we are maintaining the 2023 guidance at ZAR 37.4 billion, cognizant of the significant potential impacts of volatility in local exchange rates against the dollar, as well as our work to accelerate MTN SA's comprehensive network resilience plan, which is key focus in the coming quarters to materially improve network availability in the second half of this year. Finally, as we manage the ongoing challenges in our trading environment and the near-term impacts on our top line and margin evolution, we maintain our medium-term guidance and FY 2023 dividend guidance of a minimum of ZAR 3.30 per share. Thank you very much for listening to Tsholo and I, and I'll now hand over to Thato to field any Q&A. Thato, over to you.
Thanks so much, Ralph and Tsholo, for the introductory comments. I'll just read some of the questions that have come through on the webcast. I'll try to keep them to banks of three. The first one's around load shedding. How much did load shedding cost you guys in Q1? The first question. The second, was there any catch-up of Cell C revenue in Q1 2023, service revenue? I think there was a ZAR 200 million unrecognized revenue at the end of FY 2022. And how much revenue did you recognize and did not recognize in Q1? Let me start with those three questions.
Yeah, let's give those to Dineo. Dineo, you in the room?
Sure. Thank you, Ralph. In terms of the cost of load shedding in Q1, the impact on EBITDA was a 1.6 percentage point impact, and the impact on service revenue was 3.2 percentage points impact. Pardon me?
In terms of growth.
In terms of growth?
Yeah.
Yeah, impact on growth. In terms of your question on Cell C, what was not recognized, you would remember that we started to accrue account Cell C revenue in Q3 last year. What we left as cash accounted was the BTS revenue. In the current period, Cell C have paid some of those BTS outstanding. What is not recognized has reduced comparatively compared to the prior period.
Thanks, Dineo. Just another question kind of attached to scrip dividend. Are there any regulatory implications from you increasing your stake in MTN Nigeria from opting for the scrip dividend?
Yeah, I can take that one. Yeah, I can take that one, Thato. There's no regulatory implications. As investors will know that we did take a view, it wasn't a regulatory view, that we would want to have more local shareholding of MTN Nigeria. That was something that we elected to do. It wasn't a regulatory requirement. We've taken the scrip dividend and increased our shareholding a little bit more because of the scrip dividend option we elected for, but there are no regulatory implications.
Thanks, Ralph. Just a question on electricity and load shedding. Please, can you help us understand the SA networks preparation for material deterioration in the current grid power supply? We note the comment that battery life will be extended to six-hour stretch, but this appears to largely be catch up in the current environment, rather than planning for a worst case scenario. Do you have any color for us on this?
Charles, you wanna start there?
Yeah. Thanks, Ralph. I think the best way maybe to answer the question is to give, let's say in two, in two forms. The first thing is just to give the assurance that there is a proper enterprise-wide grid framework. This has been done in collaboration with KPMG, well endorsed and supported by management and the board. Very, very clear in terms of the entire enterprise. If you then take and zoom in into network, we have always said that the deployment of resilience on the network, the energy mix, has battery, it has solar, and it has gensets. We're not necessarily deploying resilience as a battery centric deployment alone. How do you make choices?
The first thing, of course, is, deploy the battery and then look at the criticality of the sites, look at the hub sites, and then also layer it with solar. We're taking a much more broader energy mix. If you have sites that's got an autonomy base of about 6- 8 hours, in case of a grid failure, then we have to kick in in terms of genset. That we are deploying. To be clear again, is that this is not a deployment that's going to be across the entire network in terms of scale. We're looking at critical hubs to make sure that sites that other sites depend on are hooked into in terms of gensets. Then we're looking at critical revenue generating sites as well, high site, big volume sites that must be on genset.
That forms part of the current resilience program. It's not a very short, you know, short-term approach to just do batteries alone. Just to top it up, I mean, this is a more of an industry discussion as well. We are also within the construct of what is allowable with the CompCom, looking at genset sharing at an industry level, subject to, of course, a number of regulatory issues that we have to pass. That is also what the association is dealing with as well. Thanks. Thanks, Thato.
Thanks, Charles. Maybe just an add on to that question. You said you're seeing results of network self-help plans. Can you please elaborate?
Very, very, very important. We're very clear in the beginning of the year that we need to scale up. We said that to do that, we'll do a three-pronged vendor approach. We indicated as MTN will bring Jobek in, 2,700 site. We'll let ATC and IHS do the rest. We have done quite amazing work as a team. A significant amount of sites which now are delivering north of 95% availability even under stage six. That is a major achievement for us, and I think there's very clear proof points for that. We are seeing a good recovery in terms of minutes, in terms of traffic availability. Those, those interventions are working. Now that we have proved that this model really works, we are now putting ambitions of acceleration.
That could mean a number of things. It could mean onboarding additional partner to accelerate and drive this program aggressively. On the sites that we have deployed, either whether they were done by, you know, Huawei and MTN or deployed by ATC, and as well as IHS, we are seeing significant improvement in terms of the availability of the site. The program now moves into much more a accelerated mode. Thanks, Thato.
Thanks, Charles. Maybe just another one on South Africa, just to keep the, keep them grouped together. Would you say Q1 performance in SA is the bottom, and should show sequential improvements from two Q or quarter two, or can it get worse?
We communicated when we did our annual results, we were very clear that H1 is going to be difficult. As management, we come here very clear that we're not really surprised about the outcome of the results of Q1. That is... has always been the model that we had. We indicated that we expect that H2 will recover. Of course, the recovery of H2 will always be incremental. It's not going to be just a massive jump. The incremental, of course, starts, you know, into the month of, let's say, April and May. There are proof points if you look at our recharge profile year-on-year growth and month-on-month performance. At the recharge level, if you look at the daily recharge rate, we're seeing a decent performance coming in, into the month of April.
We expect that that trajectory will continue as we go into May. If you have to ask me what are the levers of that, why are we so confident that this is possible, we have to explain that it's a mixed effect. We first of all have to appreciate the fact that we now have a solid plan on the network, we believe that will bring availability up. That should deliver traffic and recharges. We also are injecting a number of price ups, which Ralph has covered on, whether it is postpaid, whether it's prepaid, across all segments in fact, enterprise and wholesale included. Those we expect to get an injection in as well. We're also looking at on the MVNO side, there's a number of logos that are coming that we'll be announcing. That should give us an injection.
At also top line level, we expect, we're just on the big GBN deal, the Gauteng Broadband Network deal. It's a decent amount of a contract. We are quite comfortable. You know, the trajectory of recharges is very clear. I also remind that the fact that the base effects also will kick in, because it is in the month of May last year when now the grade deteriorated much more, we start to see the drop in recharges. We're fighting against the lower base effect. It's a mix of injections, and that's why we're confident that steady as we go into H2, that the run rate of H2 should be within guidance. Thanks, Alan.
Thank you, Charles.
Maybe just to add to Charles' points around the shape of the year. H1, as we said, with FY 2022 results will be tough, and Q1 is probably the toughest part of H1. As we mentioned, 90 days load shedding, effectively every day against 14 days, and now we start to hurdle some of those load shedding days with a network that will be in better shape. The price increases, they start, you know, delivering to the top line, as we move into Q3 and Q4. That's both postpaid and then selective increases that we've started now on prepaid. And that's the thesis that we see to give us an H2 that will be stronger than the H1.
you know, Q2 will still be relatively tough. Let's be clear around that.
Thanks, Ralph. This we just turn to Nigeria. There are a few questions here. I'll just read a couple of them. What was the % by which MTN increased tariffs in Nigeria during 2022 before the Nigerian regulator ordered that they be reversed? It's the first question. What is the current state status of price increase engagements with the Nigerian regulator? It's 2. What is the magnitude of the tariff increase now sought by MTN? I'll pause there for some answers.
Yeah. Maybe I should take that one, Tsholo. I mean, what we had sought in Q4 last year was a 10% increase. That's for both for data and for voice. The state of the engagements, these are ongoing. You know, Karl and I have, you know, both of us have engaged the minister. You know, there are obviously ongoing engagements with the NCC around that as well. I mean, we feel, you know, relatively confident that we will see these price increases come in the second half of this year. If not even before, you know, the end of H1, but H2 certainly.
The rationale for it, I'm not sure who asked the question, but the rationale for it, which is the statement we make into the authorities, is that if we want to have world-class networks across our markets, they need to be funded by free cash flow the company generates in prior periods. If we're not able to generate enough free cash flow, we can't invest sufficiently to give the citizens of the markets we operate in decent, you know, network experience. These are the conversations we're having. I mean, you need to leave it up to us to continue having these, but we do feel confident that in Nigeria it will come through, certainly at least in the second half of 2023.
Thank you, Ralph. Maybe just a couple of questions on upstreaming. How much of the ZAR 1.6 billion in cash upstreamed during Q1 was from Nigeria? The usual question, at what rate were you upstreaming from Nigeria?
So, so maybe if I can-
So-
If I can take that. Of the ZAR 1.6 billion, nothing came from Nigeria. If you recall, we said that we received 987 million from capital proceeds for Eko. That was outside of the ZAR 1.6 billion. That came from other markets. Then in terms of what we upstreamed at for the capital proceeds, it was an average of about 550 NGN to the dollar.
Thank you, Tsholo. Just questions here. The Sudan performance was very strong. Can it sustain in Q2 given the unrest? Can it affect your group revenue guidance? That's the first question. What is the timeline on the West African asset disposal in the markets that you mentioned?
Yeah. Let's pick on Sudan first. Obviously, you know, in recent days past, the network actually did shut down. Obviously, with the network shut down, you know, we can't generate revenue. We've been able to get fuel, you know, to critical sites, so the network is back up. It's still quite a volatile situation. I mean, Sudan is an important part of our overall portfolio, but it's too early to say, you know, what the impacts would be in Q2. We still think that, as we said, we are maintaining our medium-term guidance, so we think that the group service revenue guidance of high-mid teens would be, you know, will still be achievable in the year. On West Africa, I mean, it's early days.
I'm not gonna give a timeline to how that process will work. We have received an offer. We're engaging with the party. We'll engage with stakeholders, you know, minority shareholders across the markets, et cetera. This will take time. I mean, I think if you reflect on our announcements of exiting a market like Afghanistan, you know, it took us, you know. We're now talking about closing Afghanistan. From announcement to closure, it took us, you know, all of three years. We obviously don't anticipate it will take as long, but we don't wanna go and put a timeline, and then, you know, come back and revise it.
Thanks, Ralph. Just a question here. Can you please discuss the delay in announcing a potential transaction in mobile money, FinTech business?
We're working very diligently through the agreements. I mean, there are two sets of agreements. One is the commercial agreement, which is the long-term agreements that around how we partner to accelerate the verticals, and then in which vertical we are seeking that particular partnership. Those things are going through lawyers and advisors, et cetera. Then there's obviously the minority equity investment set of agreements. Taking a little bit longer, but we still feel comfortable that, you know, by the end of H1, so maybe we are, you know, a couple of weeks delayed, but it's not existential. We wanna make sure that we get it right. The other party also wants to make sure that it gets right. We've noted that we are looking towards concluding this, you know, in.
By June.
Thanks, Ralph. Just a clarity question on the ZAR 1.6 billion that was upstreamed to Holdco. Does that include cash upstream from South Africa? If so, it seems quite low from the rest of the markets.
I mean, the ZAR 1.6 billion does include South Africa, and the rest were from other markets. I mean, I think in the Q1, it's in line with, you know, trends we saw same period last year. But I think certainly as, as we know that we still await the 2022 interim dividend from Ghana as well as the final year as we indicated at the end of the year.
Thank you, Tsholo. Just coming back to South Africa, can you please give us a sense of the churn levels in the active subs base in South Africa during Q1? Can you please also walk us through the rationale behind increasing SA management fees to the extent of 0.7 percentage points, EBITDA margin impact?
Yeah. Thato. Thato says I'll deal with the South Africa churn question first. I mean, I can also talk about, you know, general RGS 90, that the trend is in line with the normal Q1 trend, nothing peculiar on that level. On the RGS 30, we're growing, you know, in terms of the base. The RGS 30 remains, you know, you know, relatively healthy compared to what we had, you know, in the previous year. Thanks, Thato.
Thanks, Ralph. excuse me. Thanks, Charles. What does paying down the 2024 EUR bond look like? If you have the resources, why not pay it down now?
Let's go to Tsholo.
Yeah. I think as we indicated.
Let's go to Tsholo.
Yeah. As we indicated, to the market. We obviously have to do it subject to market conditions. It is something that is still a priority for us this year. We haven't done it yet, but we are looking at doing it sometime this year as we indicated. We still in line with our plans. Yeah.
Thanks, Tsholo. Just a clarity question on the FinTech deal in terms of timing. Is that the end of June, or are we looking for a conclusion by CMD?
No, it's in June. It will be in June. Within the month of June.
Thanks, Ralph. Just another question. Have you guys reconsidered making a bid for Telkom, either in its entirety or parts of it?
There are no formal engagements that have been sanctioned by the boards on that transaction. There's nothing to update the market on.
Thanks, Ralph. Just refreshing the questions. If you look at the MoMo active user growth, it appears relatively flat, after adjusting for Ghana and Nigeria. Can you please provide some color?
Yes. I mean, generally, you know, if you look at the Q-on-Q trends, there's generally very strong growth in Q4. There's a pullback a little bit in Q1, which is effectively what happens. I think you need to look at it within the context of the seasonality of the growth that we normally see in MoMo. Q1 is generally softer than the subsequent, you know, periods. Nothing unusual about the trends that we saw.
Thanks, Ralph. Just a question here. What is the average USD to cedi rate that you're getting money out of Ghana?
Yeah. I mean, I think, bear in mind that the money we're getting from Ghana at the moment is immaterial, relatively speaking, but the last tranche that we got was at around 11 cedis to the dollar.
Thanks, Tsholo. Then a question, just can you give us some color on plans to protect group margins other than the selective price ups, i.e. expense efficiencies, et cetera?
Yeah. I mean, we're very pleased that, you know, the cost response across the group has been, you know, quite sustained. We do have a target that we've baked into our plans for this year, looking at a number of initiatives, and we're working towards another plan that will look at, you know, cost saving initiatives more over the medium term. You know, essentially refreshing the global cost benchmarking exercise that we did, which emanated from our R5 billion expense efficiency program that we communicated in the past. We are still working on those plans for the medium term. But we have some quick win initiatives that we're currently working on.
Essentially we're comfortable that we should be able to protect the margin from a group perspective as a result.
Thanks, Tsholo. A couple of questions around the scrip dividend. If you're getting scrip dividends, how do you think about the group guidance for dividends this coming year? How do you think about the potential deval in currencies in that context?
I mean, I think as Ralph indicated.
Yeah. Go ahead, Tsholo.
As Ralph indicated earlier, we maintain the guidance at ZAR 0.30. I mean, if there's any changes later in the year, we will communicate to the market with our, you know, H1 results. But at this point in time, we are comfortable that we should be able to maintain it within the context of the liquidity position that we expect.
Just to add to Tsholo's comment, I mean, you know, the ZAR 3.30, as we previously said, you know, is substantially FSA cash flows. We feel that that's a commitment to shareholders that we will hold. We always frame it as a minimum. It's the minimum is at ZAR 3.30. Obviously we've been deploying proceeds from, you know, from the other markets to delever the group balance sheet. From our perspective, it should be a number that we feel, you know, pretty confident that we can deliver to shareholders by the time we come to March of 2023. No concerns from us on that on that point.
Thanks, Ralph. There's another just a question asking for clarity. Can you please just repeat what you'd said about upstream cash from Nigeria in Q1? I think it's just a clarity question.
In Nigeria, what we've been able to upstream is the capital proceeds relating to the localisation, series one. We received ZAR 987 million. Within the ZAR 1.6 billion we have, we do not have anything that was upstreamed from Nigeria there. It was mainly from South Africa and the rest of the other markets.
Yeah, Thato, I'm just trying to get a sense of maybe the question is, the ZAR 1.6 is separate from the ZAR 900.
Yeah.
I think maybe just as a point of... Yeah. It's not part of the ZAR 1.6. The ZAR 1.6 plus ZAR 900, if you add the flows.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, there are no more questions. I'm giving it one second. No more questions. Ralph, would you like to just close off with some comments?
Yeah. Just firstly to thank all the shareholders and investors who are listening to us. You know, obviously there's a lot of work for us in the periods ahead, but we remain very excited and encouraged by the operational performance of the business. I think, you know, H one for South Africa will remain tough, but we are very encouraged by our efforts to see recovery in H two. We feel pretty confident that H two, with all our network resilience initiatives, we'll see a better H two on both service revenue at the EBITDA level. You know, we remain focused on our execution to ensure that we get, you know, much stronger set of results in the H two period.
Nigeria and other markets, big focus on the tariff increases, substantial amount of engagements with authorities, positioning why these tariff increases are necessary for funding future capital expenditure. We're encouraged by those conversations. They take a bit of time. On the strategic progress, very focused on the work around the portfolio, very focused on the work around FinTech, and ensuring, as Tsholo said, that beyond the tariff increases that we also are driving expense efficiencies across our business, maintaining our medium-term guidance in the ZAR 0.03 FY 2023 dividend. We feel very, you know, clear in our minds that that ZAR 0.03 is something that we made, you know, as pretty much a commitment to our shareholders, and we work hard to deliver on that.
Thanks very much and, again, if you have any further questions, please send them to Thato. Thank you.