Good afternoon to everybody and welcome to MTN Group's results for the six months ended 30 June 2022. I trust you're all safe and well as we continue to navigate life as we currently know it. My name is Thato Motlanthe and I'm the head of investor relations for the MTN Group and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this afternoon. I'm pleased to say that we're moving forward in hosting in-person events given that the COVID restrictions have been lifted and I'm happy to be joined by a slightly bigger crowd this afternoon, which includes some MTN colleagues, as well as a handful of shareholders who have agreed to come in today.
A warm welcome also to the MTNers across our markets, as well as everyone who's dialed in through the webcast and listening in and tuning in on BDTV or MTN, the MTN Group YouTube channel. In terms of housekeeping, let's start with that. On the screen, you should be seeing our standard disclaimer and safe harbor statement on the screen and that covers the presentation for today. For those of us in the auditorium, in the case of an emergency, just to remind you, there's an exit door to my right and one at the back. Just turning to the period under review. For the six months past, we've brought continued challenges across the globe for companies, including MTN.
Our business has been fairly resilient, as you have seen from our results and I think it's a testament to the teams across the MTN markets who have continued to roll up their sleeves in meeting these challenges. I think that's enabled MTN to lead in the current environment that we find ourselves in. We're driven by the belief that everybody deserves the benefits of a modern connected life. Turning to the agenda for today, the program will run as follows. MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita will come up and he'll give us a strategic and operational overview. Following this, Tsholofelo Molefe, Group CFO, will come and give us some financial highlights and then Ralph will come back to the stage to give us some of the key focus areas for the coming year.
We'll then open up the floor to questions for Ralph and Tsolo. Just to note, for those of you who've dialed in through our webcast, you're able to submit your questions through that platform and we'll then read them out for you. Finally, for those of you who are tweeting during the session, the hashtag is MTNInterims22 and our Twitter handle is @MTNGroup. I think at this point it's my pleasure to welcome Ralph onto the stage. Thank you.
Thato, thanks very much and extending my own appreciation to everybody who's taken the time to dial in. Firstly, thanks to the 17,000 MTNers across our 19 markets who produce the excellent results that Tsolo and I have the pleasure to share with investors. We trust that you've had opportunity to go through our comprehensive SENS document. It covers the detail around how we've delivered in what was quite a challenging macro set of conditions, which I'll talk to. You know, to the MTNers, extending my appreciation for all the hard work that you've done to deliver these results. Before I talk to the operational and strategic review, just to start with the operating context that these results were delivered. Enormous amount of geopolitical, macroeconomic and regulatory challenges that we faced in the six months under review.
We've put them into four main buckets of factors that impacted our operating results. Firstly, the macroeconomic conditions, I guess they're all well known to those who are listening in. Elevated inflation, rising interest rates, you know, were common themes across pretty much all our markets. There was weakness in local currencies against the U.S. dollar and for many against the rand and the availability of Forex, particularly in a market like Nigeria, was quite challenging during the period. Supply chain was another factor that we had to contend with. Supply chain disruptions, delays in shipping of radios and essential equipment experienced particularly at the start of the Ukraine crisis. We've also had to deal with challenged availability of high-end devices given chips and shortages across the globe.
Within our sector, we had to contend with regulatory developments, the main ones really being around SIM registration directives that have come into key markets, particularly Nigeria and Ghana. For both of those directives, we as MTN are fully being in compliance with. We had to deal with new mobile money taxes in a couple of West African markets. Firstly, Cameroon, also Benin and then in quarter two of the period under review, a 1.5% e-levy implemented in Ghana. The final set of conditions that we had to deal with were really related to energy and power. Obviously, with many of our networks relying on diesel, we did see pressure in the costs of delivering our services from rising network costs.
In South Africa particularly, we did have on-grid power constraints that in May and June were particularly challenging, affecting the level of network availability that we are used to. Just to give stakeholders a comparison, in South Africa, we have a grid that was designed for, you know, 100% on-grid power and you've got to juxtapose that with Nigeria, which is a grid with 17,000 towers that runs 95% on diesel and generators. The challenges for South Africa, you know, were quite severe, particularly in quarter two, where we experienced stage 2, stage 4 and stage 6 levels of load shedding, in the last three-four weeks of the half. Sorry, of June. These were the conditions that we operated in. Under those conditions, we had very strong results that we delivered.
I would position these results under four main categories. Solid operating performance and some of the key metrics that we look at which gives us the confidence around the investment case of MTN is continued net subscriber growth that we've seen up to now 282 million subscribers across our footprint. That's an addition of 9.2 million subscribers. Data growth across our network averaged 43.3%, showing the continued demand for our services and the level of low internet adoption that is still within our markets. Then the fintech ecosystem continues to expand and grow. If one looks at the transaction volumes that we saw, at over 6 billion transactions in the period, that grew a very healthy 31.5%.
The pressure of new mobile money taxes, as well as a decision that we proactively took to cut P2P pricing to maintain our competitive positions, impacted the service revenue in fintech that was recorded and Tsholo will cover that in a level of detail. Those were the main points from an operational highlights point of view. On strategic priorities that we have set out as part of Ambition 2025, a couple of points to mention. The fintech and fiber structural separations are progressing well. We are seeing progress in our drive for localization in key markets and we did conclude transactions in this period in Ghana specifically, to lift up the local shareholding to 23.7% in the period. We have received a binding offer for 100% of MTN Afghanistan.
It has been part of our strategy to focus on the African continent and exit in particular the consolidated subsidiaries that we previously had in MENA. You know, looking at our exits that we've already completed in Syria, Yemen and now having this binding offer, which we are in progress in terms of working through the issues related to getting to a final share purchase agreement. In terms of the financial resilience of the businesses, actually not just been maintained, it has been improved during the period. We've seen continued faster de-leveraging. The Holdco leverage is now at 0.8 times. Y ou will remember that our target is to be less than 1.5 times.
Having a comfortable cushion on leverage is something that we've been able to achieve, supported by the cash inflows that we received in the period of about ZAR 12 billion, as I mentioned, 4.5 billion of that coming through from Nigeria. Continued expense efficiencies have helped us create buffers to deal with the inflation pressures and we've been able to register margin expansion in the period. The liquidity position of the company remains very healthy at just under ZAR 56 billion, which is the composite of the cash that we have, as well as committed facilities. The financial resilience is not only maintained but actually has been strengthened. In doing all of this, we are very mindful of our social responsibilities as MTN.
We've continued in the way that we've invested in our networks, have also brought the average price of data by 22.5%, continued to drive, you know, broadband coverage and contributing fiscally to nation states, paid cash taxes of ZAR 7.3 billion in the period. These are the results that we achieved in summary and Tsholo and I will take you through some of the details. I won't spend too much time on the financial highlights. Tsholo will take you through them. Suffice to say that we're trading largely in line with our medium-term guidance. Service revenue at 14.8% constant currency is in line with our medium-term guidance, driven by very strong data growth contributing you know ZAR 34.1 billion to overall service revenue. Fintech, as I mentioned, underlying dynamics very healthy.
The growth at 14% was moderated by the P2P cuts that we took to maintain competitive positions in key markets, as well as the impact of mobile money taxes. We still feel that that business is on a good growth trajectory as we progress forward. We're able to eke out efficiencies as well as operating leverage to have a 0.3% EBITDA margin expansion. From an earnings point of view, very healthy underlying earnings growth of 661 cents per share, growing at 30.9% in the period. We accelerated CapEx. This time last year, we were talking about a CapEx envelope of just over ZAR 11.5 billion and we've done ZAR 17 billion in this period, particularly accelerating CapEx in Ghana and Nigeria.
We see the data growth in both markets, reflecting that the investments we're making, particularly in the transition from 3G to 4G networks, is generating returns. As I mentioned, we've got very strong, you know, performance on the Holdco leverage, now at 0.8 times. The underlying operating free cash flow has remained strong, growing at 24%. The reported free cash flow, as you'll see from Tsholo , was impacted by the investments that we made, both in accelerating CapEx but also procuring spectrum in South Africa and in Nigeria over the period, which we believe positions us well to remain competitive as we move through the technology cycles of 3G, 4G and ultimately 5G. On e of my favorite KPIs, many of you will remember we introduced ROE as a KPI, at the end of 2018.
It was 11.5%. Today, we're talking about an ROE expansion by 4.6% to 24.2%. Very healthy, you know, growth in underlying returns, you know, for our stakeholders. Tsholo will cover that in a lot more detail. Covering our markets, you know, just a couple of key points. South Africa had very strong results, which Tsholo will cover, in a very challenging macro. The constrained power supply, as well as the KZN floods that we experienced in April, really put pressure on the business. But the business was still able to deliver a very solid service revenue growth, margin expansion, as well as profit growth, as Tsholo will cover. The main activities really were the continued investment in 4G and also accelerating our 5G. I think Charles and team are pretty close to their 20% pop coverage for 5G already.
We appreciate the accolades of MTN being seen as having the best 5G network. As I mentioned, quite a lot of our time was focused around ensuring the network remained resilient. We had implemented a multi-phase program to ensure that the network resilience is improved over time and we're able to get back to the world-class levels of network availability that we believe our customers had become used to. Obviously, a feature of the period was us securing the multi-band spectrum in the 800, 2,600 and 3,500 bands. We paid ZAR 5.2 billion, you know, in the spectrum auction, again, positioning us well for continued growth across our markets. What we also experienced, you know, we've often spoken about our own internal measures of market shares.
We did pick up in the half, probably about half a percentage point of market share, based on our bi-directional market share analysis and maintaining the number one MNP position. Many thanks to Charles and the team for the very solid results, Tsholo will cover the numbers a little bit later on. If we move to Nigeria, Karl and the team reported results recently. Again, the main points around the macro were related to paucity of Forex, as well as dealing with the new NIN SIM directive that came in at the end of March, early April, where we had to disconnect 19 million of our subscribers from circuit switch voice.
We've seen very good and steady progress that's encouraged us that we should see in the second half, you know, a revenue profile that looks more like quarter one as opposed to quarter two. As I mentioned earlier on, we did accelerate CapEx, ZAR 7.6 billion. The majority of the CapEx that we deployed actually in the period was in Nigeria. We're very pleased that we were able to have a successful launch of the MoMo PSB. A very good growth we experienced in the first six weeks of launch and very encouraged by the progress. This has been something that we've been talking to investors about. Now that we've launched and obviously with full year results, we'll have more to say around the progress of that business.
Again, very healthy data traffic growth, 79% data traffic growth over the period. We've also increased our 4G coverage. This time last year, 4G coverage in Nigeria was about 65%. It's now 75%. A number one NPS position overall, as well as the network in Nigeria. Across our other markets, we saw, you know, strong overall growth but each region experienced, you know, different pressures and there were some nuances within the results. In the CER region, we saw in particular voice pressure in a market like Uganda. But what we did also see in Uganda was an improving fintech profile after the introduction again of mobile money taxes in prior reporting periods and so a very healthy fintech growth in Uganda of about 20%. Rwanda, again, very good top line growth. In Rwanda, we don't have 4G.
4G is delivered through a wholesale open access model. The cost of that comes through the P&L. There was a bit of margin pressure as we offloaded more of the traffic onto the 4G network. Those will be some of the key features in CER. WACA, obviously very strong overall growth in Ghana, as reported in recent periods. Pressure, as I mentioned earlier on, with the introduction of new mobile money taxes. The competitive position in Côte d'Ivoire is very encouraging for us. Service revenue growth in Côte d'Ivoire is approximately about 1% but that's got many layers to it. We saw 27% growth in data traffic, so the data traffic growth in Côte d'Ivoire has been very healthy. We are hurdling some of the P2P price cuts that we took to maintain our position in Côte d'Ivoire.
What I can say is that we have a recovery plan in Côte d'Ivoire that's tracking broadly in line with our expectation. We are seeing in terms of sub growth in mobile money in Côte d'Ivoire, that's up about 37% and the transaction volumes there are over 104% in the same period. We should see revenue growth back at the end of the final part of quarter four as that recovery plan in Côte d'Ivoire takes traction. In MENA, I'll highlight the fact that MTN Irancell is growing very strongly. That service revenue growth of 32.4% was supported by an EBITDA margin expansion of 42.6%. In a very challenging environment, that business continues to grow. The Snapp business, you know, continues to be a market leader with over 3.3 million rides a day in the Iranian market.
You know, very solid growth from MTN Irancell. Just moving to the Fintech ecosystem, as I mentioned earlier on, you know, we're still strongly encouraged by how the ecosystem is expanding. One measure of the expansion is the level of volume of transaction, which I mentioned earlier up by 31.5%. Transaction value at $116 billion dollar equivalent was 1% up but in constant currency was 11.7. We've seen good growth in subscribers, agent and merchant expansions, you know, during the period. We've spoken at the end of last year that one of the things we're focusing on is the transition from USSD to a much more appified experience. These are small numbers but they are indicative of growth.
At the end of last year, only 3% of our mobile money users were regularly interacting on the app and at the half year that's moved to 6%. These are some of the numbers that we watch in terms of the progression and the expansion of our Fintech ecosystem. Two important points around Fintech that I would like to highlight. Firstly, very good progress towards the structural separation from our GSM business of the opco Fintech businesses. Thirteen of the 16 markets have completed. We only have three and that would be South Sudan, Liberia and South Africa. The rest, the progress, you know, has moved on quite satisfactorily. The second point I would raise is that we are exploring on a very bespoke basis strategic partnerships into the MTN Group Fintech structure.
We'd always said one of the ways for us to accelerate the development of the Fintech business is to bring partners with capabilities. Not really looking for financial investors but institutions and partners who know the space who can help accelerate. That process has begun and the outcomes of that we will be sharing, you know, before the end of the year. Those are two important points around the Fintech ecosystem. In terms of accelerating portfolio transformation, three major points to raise with these results. Firstly, we concluded the SA towers transaction, where IHS Towers would take operational management of 5,700 of our towers and deliver power as a service across our portfolio. You know, they've already started in this month to take over operational control from Charles Molapisi and the team.
That transaction, as you well remember, had net proceeds of ZAR 5.1 billion. The second point would be that we've made further progress in localization efforts, particularly Ghana, where we've completed, you know, transactions selling some of the our shareholding to pension funds. We've also sold to five SPVs who are of a strategic partner in nature, who we have vendor financed and now we are at the level of localization, 23.7%, against our target of 30% further localization. The third point would be really around the progress we are making towards exiting the Middle East. As I've mentioned, binding offer now received and we are in the process with a third party in discussing, you know, issues related to SPA and that obviously will be subject also to regulatory approvals.
You know, the exit of the consolidated subsidiary allows us to reduce, you know, our footprint, focus our resources on the African continent. With respect to Irancell, I mean, this business will remain as a financial investment that we have a 49% shareholding. Managing for value, as I said, this business, you know, has been growing, you know, very steadily in a very challenged environment. We are making progress towards the portfolio acceleration in line with the commitments that we've made to stakeholders. Finally, before I hand over to Tsholo , just to comment on what we've promised stakeholders, in particular shareholders, we are tracking largely in line with our commitments in terms of service revenue. Pretty much meeting our commitments of mid-teens% group service revenue. South Africa performing, you know, well within the guidance range.
You know, strong growth, as I mentioned, given the challenging macro. We saw really good growth on postpaid. We saw good growth actually in the enterprise business. The prepaid market was a bit under pressure. In Nigeria, just a smidgen below the 20% target that we've set for Karl and the team. Accelerate Fintech platform growth. As I mentioned, the ecosystem remains very healthy but we're taking a bit of revenue pressure as we've cut P2P pricing and these mobile money taxes, you know, have come into effect. As I mentioned earlier on, you know, we feel pretty confident that we'll lap, you know, some of these effects and get back to growth, particularly if we look at, you know, what we're seeing in MTN Uganda, where we're seeing that the growth levels are back very strongly.
Holdco leverage, very healthy. Asset realization, we put a cross for ourselves, because we'd have wanted to have pushed ahead with series two in Nigeria as well as IHS but market conditions are not right for us to progress with those transactions. ZAR 15.8 billion out of ZAR 25 billion is still a good achievement. As I mentioned, ROE, you know, in the right direction, improving towards 25%. Let me now hand over to Tsholo , who will take us through the detailed financials and I'll come back in closing to provide some comments as we look ahead. Thanks, Tsholo.
Thank you very much, Ralph. A very good afternoon to everyone here in person, as well as those that are joining us on various platforms. Hello to all our MTNers. It's good to see all of you here today in person and of course, those on platforms, thank you very much for joining us. I'm going to take you through the financial performance for the first half of the year. I'll cover firstly the material items that have been as well as the significant one-offs that have impacted the reported results. I will then cover the key line items on the group income statement specifically. I will also share with you the performance of two of our major markets, SA and Nigeria.
I will also then take you through the group incomes, the salient items on the income statement in a bit more detail and then share with you how we've utilized the sources of cash that we've generated, how we've improved the balance sheet, as well as how we've improved returns for shareholders. If we turn to material items that have impacted reported results, there are essentially two items to highlight here. Firstly, on the macroeconomic environment, we've seen volatility of currencies in the markets that we operate in. In particular, we saw the stronger rand on average exchange rate, resulting in a negative 2 percentage point impact on reported group service revenue relative to constant currency but closing weaker against the dollar, thus impacting our balance sheet items as well as leverage.
We also saw Forex losses of about ZAR 2.4 billion as a result, thus impacting our finance charges. The second material item to our numbers that material impact to our numbers was really rising inflation and high energy costs due to the macro challenges that we've seen, which saw upward pressure on our operating expenses. We've also seen significant once-off transactions that have impacted these reported items and that have impacted the reported results. A couple of items to note here. Firstly, we recognized an accounting gain on disposal of the SA towers of about ZAR 261 million with a net cash proceeds of ZAR 5.1 billion. MTN Afghanistan has now been reclassified as held for sale. As a result, goodwill as well as investment or impairment losses has been recognized totaling ZAR 945 million.
Upon completion of the disposal of Afghanistan, we expect that the FCTRs, which are the foreign currency translation reserve gain of about ZAR 674 million, will be released to the income statement. These significant once-off items have had an impact on our expenses, our EBITDA, EBIT, as well as headline earnings per share. If we then move on to the income statement for the period, on the right-hand side, you will see we're showing the movement year-over-year, both on reported as well as in constant currency. We delivered service revenue growth of 12.8% to ZAR 92.5 billion on a reported basis and 14.8% growth to ZAR 91.6 billion in constant currency. This is in line with our medium-term target and it was largely driven by double-digit growth from Nigeria and Ghana.
We also saw a healthy top-line growth in all our regions, contributing to the overall service revenue growth. On a reported basis, EBITDA before one-off items, which I mentioned in the previous slide, grew by 13.7% to ZAR 44.1 billion and in constant currency, EBITDA increased by 15.1% to ZAR 43.84 billion. This was really driven by healthy operational results across all our markets. The increase that you see in depreciation, amortization and goodwill was a moderated 3.1% and it was mainly due to CapEx additions, goodwill impairment on Afghanistan but set off by the transfer of SA tower assets, which, as I said, held for sale, which are no longer being depreciated .
Net finance costs increased by 7.7% in constant currency and this was largely due to Forex losses of ZAR 2.4 billion, as I indicated, increased borrowings largely from Nigeria at slightly higher interest rates, which led to the increase in the average cost of borrowing. The share of results from associates and joint ventures increased by 8.2%, sorry, to ZAR 1 billion, driven primarily by the underlying performance from MTN Irancell. Income tax expense grew by 34.9% year-on-year and this was largely due to withholding taxes that were higher, as well as taxes paid on the sale of South Africa towers, as well as an increase in nondeductible expenses. We had group effective tax rate reported at 44% and this was largely due to higher profits generated, the utilization of deferred tax assets not previously recognized.
On a normal basis, our group effective tax rate was about 37%, which is really in line with our guided range of mid- to high 30s. There was also a significant increase in non-controlling interest of about 57% during the period and this was largely due to higher profits but also the localization that we did in Nigeria, Ghana, as well as Uganda. Adjusted headline earnings increased by 30.9% in the period and this was really positively impacted by the adjustments of non-operational items totaling ZAR 0.94 per share and I will unpack that in a later slide. I will now unpack our group service revenue growth in more detail. As you can see, data was the biggest contributor of growth, followed by solid growth from FinTech, as well as voice now showing moderate growth.
Voice, as you can see, grew by 1.9% and this was really supported by voice traffic of 2.4% increase year-on-year and was negatively impacted by the performance of MTN South Africa as customers migrate now to voice over IP and also due to the general economic pressures that we see in South Africa. Data revenue grew 35.9% and this was driven by a surge in data traffic of 43.3% and really underpinned by active data subscriber growth of 16.1 million, closing the year at 130 million subs. Digital revenue also increased by 6.7%, supported by improved uptake of our digital offering. FinTech grew by 14% and this was driven mainly by the base growth of 24%, taking us to 60.7 million users. We also saw wholesale revenue growing by 6.5% with steady national roaming performance, particularly in MTN South Africa.
Other revenue, which includes mainly bulk SMS, ICT, as well as enterprise connectivity, grew 24.3%, benefiting from increased data usage at the back of strong performance in fixed access data, cloud and security, as well as hosting services, particularly in South Africa and some turnaround that we're starting to see in the SME segments in other markets. Before I continue with the group elements of our with our other elements of our group performance, I would like to just touch on South Africa in a bit more detail. As you can see, this slide illustrate the service revenue expenses, EBITDA, as well as CapEx during the period under review. As you can see that MTN SA, as I indicated, delivered 14.1% increase in service revenue overall. If I unpack this further, voice revenue, you will notice that declined 7.5% year-on-year.
As I indicated, the decline was in line with the steadily declining voice revenue trends we see in the market due to growing VoIP as well as data substitution. This was also driven by network interruptions due to load-shedding impact in South Africa. As I indicated, the general economic pressures on consumers. Data revenue grew by 14.6%, supported by 41.5% increase in data traffic, as well as growth in data active data subscribers of 15.3%, now totaling 18 million subscribers. SA experienced a strong digital revenue growth at 8.3% and the trend is expected to continue as we see RMS increasing by 52.8% during the period. FinTech revenue, which comprised airtime lending fees specifically, had a slight decrease of 0.9% as customers also start prioritizing spend due to the economic pressures.
Wholesale revenue was broadly flat, impacted mainly by the decline in Cell C revenue. MTN SA recorded ZAR 1.2 billion roaming revenue during the period, which was down 9.3% relative to the same period last year. We do continue to account for Cell C on a cash basis and still have some unrecognized roaming revenue close to about ZAR 300 million. Looking at expenses for SA, you can see that cost of sales grew by 8.3% and this was mainly due to device cost of sales, which grew by 13.2% due to increased subsidized devices to remain market competitive. Device gross margins also declined by close to about seven percentage points as a result. Commission expenses were also up in South Africa by 5.1% due to device distribution and activation commissions during the period.
Operating expenses was broadly in line with inflation, increasing by 6.1% due to increased network operating expenses, which were up 13.9%, predominantly in rent and utilities and maintenance. We've had additional expenses for generator fuel, particularly as we cushion the impact of load-shedding that we experienced in the period. MTN SA EBITDA margin as a result declined by 0.6 percentage point to 40.8%. Amidst this, however, we've seen a very good contribution towards expense efficiency in South Africa. We saw ZAR 3.2 billion spent in terms of capital expenditure excluding leases with a total of ZAR 9.6 billion including IFRS 16 leases of about ZAR 5.1 billion from the SA sale and leaseback of the towers to IHS.
The CapEx excluding leases was in support of the continued investment that SA continues to make in 3G and 4G sites, as well as starting the acceleration of the rollout of 5G, a total of about 443 done during the period. This resulted in CapEx intensity of about 13%. In the next slide, we can see that all of MTN South Africa's business units really delivered healthy and sustained growth. Just a few comments to make here. Encouragingly, you can see that the consumer prepaid business was up 1.2% in the first half. This was also supported, as I indicated earlier, by strong data consumption but partly offset by the pressure that we've seen in voice revenue.
The consumer postpaid business also delivered service revenue growth of 5% in a challenging environment, driven by growth in subscribers as well as sustained uplift in data consumption. Enterprise service revenue remained on a strong positive trajectory, up 20.7%. In particular, the strong mobile growth in enterprise business benefited from strong data product proposition as well as distribution channel expansion, while the growth in ICT business was mainly driven by the strong recovery in connectivity. If we move on to Nigeria, most of you will have seen the reported results sometime last week, so I will briefly touch on just the salient points here. MTN Nigeria delivered another solid performance with double-digit service revenue of about 19.9% in constant currency, with voice data and fintech being the main drivers of growth.
You can see that voice delivered 2.9% increase in service. Voice revenue delivered 2.9% increase due to higher usage in the active SIM base, driven by improved network quality with a 5% increase in minutes of use from the existing base. The total subscribers increased by about 7.6% year-on-year, despite the ongoing effects of the NIN SIM registration requirements. We saw strong data revenue growth of 52.5%, underpinned by increased usage from the existing base, with impressive data traffic growth of 79.3%, supported by acceleration of 4G rollout in particular and enhanced network capacity. When we look at fintech revenue, we see a commendable growth of 27.8% due to sustained growth in the use of XtraTime, in particular up 26.6% and the use of broader fintech services by consumers.
If we then look at the total expenses, we see an 18.8% increase, largely from cost of sales growing by 22.9%. The cost of sales was largely driven by higher commission and distributions, which were up 17% and this is due to increased airtime sales as well as activation commissions following a year-on-year increase in gross connections that were lower in the prior year. The prior year low base was really associated with the NCC ban on SIM sales. We also saw aggressive data device sales coming from Nigeria relative to last year following the lifting of the ban on the SIM sales. Regulatory fees also went up by about 19.8% in line with the increase that we saw in service revenue.
When we look at OpEx increase, we saw 16.6%, broadly in line with Nigeria inflation due to higher network costs from accelerated site rollouts, the rising energy cost, as well as the devaluation of the Naira and the CPI impacts on the BTS lease rentals. MTN Nigeria continues to implement the expense efficiency initiatives aimed at driving margin expansion and we saw margin expansion of about 0.5 percentage point during the period, ending at 53.6% EBITDA margin. This was despite the impact of high energy costs due to the macro, which impacted the margins by about 0.3 percentage points. Capital expenditure in total was ZAR 11.5 billion, with about ZAR 7.5 billion on CapEx, excluding leases, as I indicated, driven by the acceleration of 3G and 4G sites, with CapEx intensity of about 21.5%, excluding leases.
If we now look at the fintech business in a bit more detail, you will see that fintech now contributes 9% to total group service revenue and it rose by 14% in the period as we continued to scale up our mobile financial services. The growth in fintech during the period was impacted by the introduction of the e-levies and MoMo taxes in our markets, as well as pricing pressure due to increased competition. Despite these challenges, we are pleased that we managed to maintain a solid growth in active users of 24% to 60.7 million active users. The bulk of the fintech revenue came from wholesale services at 60% of the total fintech revenue, which declined from 65% in the same period last year, while payments and e-commerce contributi on increased from 11% to now 14%.
EBITDA growth of 4.6% is really in line with the solid service revenue growth, with pro forma EBITDA margins at about 42%, declining from 3.7%. This is largely because our EBITDA margins, we're starting to see a rebase as the growth picks up and we start allocating the full cost associated with running the business. Importantly for us is tracking the adjusted free cash flow, which grew by 2.1%, which is a key metric given the economics of the business, which is capital light. EBITDA conversion to cashflow is a very important metric that we look at, which is strong during the period. Now, if we go back to the group expenses, you will see that the group expenses were well managed in a very challenging macro environment.
In the first half, our cost of sales was up by 11.5%, largely driven by the increased commission and distribution, as I mentioned earlier, mainly in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, as well as increased handsets, as I indicated, largely in Nigeria and South Africa specifically. The main drivers of commission and distribution, I've indicated them and it was really due to increased activation commissions and increased SIM sales in particular. We saw the introduction of new dealer commission structures in some of the markets as well and also the impacts of growing our MoMo business. Looking at operating expenses, we see an increase of 15.6% and the main impact has been on our network expenses as a result of high inflation and high energy cost due to the macro challenges.
We saw the effect of Forex and CPI on some of our tower contracts, thus increasing the network costs. OpEx growth was also driven by higher litigation costs, particularly in the MENA region, increased professional fees as we accelerate our initiatives on Ambition 2025. We do look at measures that we can put in place to contain inflationary pressure. We continue with our expense efficiency program aimed at capping these inflationary pressures. During the period, we managed to realize ZAR 1.9 billion worth of efficiencies, with the largest savings recorded being from MTN South Africa, MTN Sudan, as well as MTN Nigeria. These savings in OpEx were largely in the mobile and IT, roaming, as well as sales and distributions in particular.
So far, we've been able to achieve about ZAR 5.6 billion, well in excess of the over ZAR 5 billion medium term target that we had given. The results of the EEP can also be seen on the improvement of the total cost to revenue ratio that you see on your right-hand side, now at 54.7%, which has improved from 57.2% since the introduction of our cost saving initiatives. We will continue with these measures to contain inflation, really focusing on renegotiation of inflation indexed contracts, pricing negotiations to leverage economies of scale, staff optimization initiatives, as well as digital transformations. If we look at our Group EBITDA and Group EBITDA margin on this slide, you can see that the drivers of Group EBITDA in absolute terms and in terms of the margin.
Overall, Group EBITDA on all underlying operations was 15.1% in constant currency. The growth was broad-based, really across most markets, led by the performance in Nigeria, the WECA, as well as the MENA region, with the growth in WECA mainly being from Ghana. The group's reported EBITDA margin slightly improved to 45.3% before one-off items. At an operational level, the EBITDA margin expanded 0.3 percentage points, with 3 percentage points with positive contributors from all the markets except for SA and SEA region, as I indicated. The margin expansion was supported by really solid service revenue growth and our expense efficiency program as well.
Looking at the headline earnings per share in particular, you can see that this analysis provides a reconciliation of the attributable earnings per share through to adjusted headline earnings per share, which gives more visibility on operational performance. The difference between the attributable earnings per share, which grew by 200.7% and basic headline earnings per share, which grew by 46.5%, is due to the significant transactions mentioned earlier, such as Afghanistan impairments and the gain on disposal of towers, really resulting in a basic headline earnings of ZAR 0.5567 per share. A further adjustment on the reported headline earnings per share for Forex losses as well as IFRS 2 charge in Ghana specifically resulted in adjusted headline earnings per share of ZAR 0.616, giving us an increase of 30.9%.
Which is really an indication of positive operational earnings momentum under challenging trading conditions. If we then move on to CapEx, we can see that we capitalized ZAR 17 billion during the year across the markets, achieving a CapEx intensity of 17.5%, excluding leases. We accelerated the rollout of 3G and 4G sites in support of the growth that we are seeing, mainly in markets like Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Uganda. We also rolled out a total of 1,700 3G sites and just over 7,900 4G sites and also accelerated 5G sites, mainly in South Africa, adding to a total of 530 sites. Improved on the modernization of our network.
The network connectivity CapEx, which is the RAN transmission core and site infrastructure, as you can see, accounts for 74% of the total CapEx, with the balance being investments in IT, including the development of product tools to support our growing platform business, accounting for 26% of the CapEx. We focused on investing really in faster growing areas and we accelerated the CapEx to also mitigate the supply chain, as well as the Forex foreign exchange volatility. Our group CapEx guidance for 2022 has been revised up to ZAR 35.3 billion due to change in current currency assumptions, as well as accelerated CapEx to support the growth that we are seeing.
However, we do expect that CapEx intensity will reduce over the medium term as the business continue to grow, with group CapEx intensity anticipated to move from 18% to about 15% over the medium term. Moving on to our cash flows. As you can see, operating cash flow before the Spectrum acquisition, as Ralph indicated earlier, grew by 24%, with Spectrum acquisitions, particularly in Nigeria and SA amounting to ZAR 7.3 billion. This led to operating free cash flow decreasing by 76.1% and was also impacted by the accelerated CapEx and pressure on working capital due to advanced payments to vendors to cap against the impact of forex, as well as advanced ordering of material to manage supply chain shortages due to the global crisis.
In the first half, we saw ZAR 4.3 billion of working capital outflow, largely due to those timing effects relating to payments to vendors as I indicated. Working capital does remain a key priority for us as we continue our efforts to preserve cash in the macroeconomic environment. We expect to minimize this impact on the working capital in the second half with a number of cash release initiative, looking at supply chain financing and handsets receivable financing, among others. The key cash outflows that we saw include taxes paid of ZAR 7.3 billion and this included the tax paid on the SA tower proceeds. Net interest paid on borrowings of ZAR 5.2 billion as well as payments for CapEx, as I indicated.
The movement in financing activities of ZAR 523 million was largely driven by net inflow of borrowings of ZAR 2.4 billion and settlement of lease obligations of ZAR 3.5 billion. During the year, we actually had borrowings, new borrowings of ZAR 8.1 billion, which was offset by the settlement of ZAR 5.8 billion. This was also impacted by the net inflow of about ZAR 569 million, mainly for the purchase of treasury shares and proceeds from localization. Other investments of ZAR 5.6 billion were mainly driven by the proceeds from the disposal of SA towers, ZAR 6.4 billion and this was impacted by the outflow of restricted cash in Nigeria of about ZAR 2.6 billion and the realization of some short-term investments of about ZAR 1.4 billion.
Other of ZAR 533 million relates to the cash balances sitting in Afghanistan that we've now classified as held for sale, therefore reducing the group cash balances. Moving on to the Holdco debt. We continue to improve the strength of our balance sheet with progress on upstreaming and faster deleveraging of the Holdco. On the top left-hand side, you can see the progress that we've made in the last three years in reducing the Holdco net debt, now sitting at ZAR 28 billion from ZAR 55 billion in 2019. The group leverage was maintained at 0.4x since the previous year and improved from 0.8x in 2020, supported by strong cash positions. While the Holdco leverage improved to 0.8x from 1x last year but also improving from 2.2x in 2020.
Holdco leverage was positively impacted by the progress that we made in upstreaming cash from markets, in particular, a significant cash upstreamed from Nigeria of about ZAR 4.5 billion. We have also made improvements in our debt mix, with 58% of our debt now being rand denominated, as we continue to reduce our exposure to U.S. dollar debt and improve the funding mix at the Holdco leverage level. We have a healthy maturity debt profile, as you see on the top right, on our ZAR-denominated debt at Holdco level. Our U.S.-denominated debt is made up of the Eurobonds maturing in 2024 as well as 2026. With a combination of current market conditions as well as our cash position, we have an opportunity now to for an early part payment of the U.S. debt through liability management, which we are exploring.
Now to conclude on my presentation, let us look at the progress we've made on the ROE. We see an increase from 19.6% in December 2021 to 24.2%, largely driven by operational earnings growth from the consolidated subsidiaries. The notable drags on ROE were a higher group effective tax rate of 44% and movements in non-controlling interest driven by the Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda localization reduction in shareholding. Included in other non-operational items largely attributable to movements directly in equity. Items that impacted ROE positively were the FCTR movements, with an impact of about 0.8%. This was due to the devaluation of currencies across various markets and most notably, Ghana. The revaluation loss on our investment in IHS also resulted in a 1.2 percentage point impact.
We are pleased with the ROE evolution, which is improving towards the 25% target that we have over the medium term. Ladies and gentlemen, that ends my presentation. I'll hand over to Ralph.
Thanks very much to Tsholo for providing our stakeholders with that, tour de force on our financial results. As you can see, a lot of work underway in the first half. I trust now that you have a very comprehensive view on the underlying financial dynamics in the business. Before we move to Q&A, maybe just a couple of points as we look ahead, for the balance of the year and a few comments around the investment case that we still believe remain, super strong for the MTN Group. As we look into the second half of the year, again, there are four factors that we think, will determine, the operating strategic progress and financial results of the group. Inflation and currency movements, we believe will remain a headwind that we'll need to navigate.
You know, sub-Saharan inflation is expected to remain relatively elevated, as food and transport inflation, you know, works its way into wage inflation. I think that's something that we're very alive to. The foreign currency or exchange rate volatility that we experience is something that we're taking a view that the challenges we received in the first half, you know, will be maintained. Supply chains, we don't see any relenting on supply chain disruptions, particularly with zero COVID policy in China creating disruptions, you know, particularly around chipset shortages. In terms of the SIM registrations I mentioned earlier up front, this is something that we take very seriously. You know, our businesses will be very disciplined in meeting the directors both in Nigeria as well as in Ghana.
The Ghana SIM registration deadline has been extended to end of September. Ebenezer Asante and the teams are very focused on that. Obviously, the energy and power conundrum that we faced in the first half is something that we will, you know, still face as we go forward. The South Africa on-grid power constraints are also items that we believe we need to anticipate that they will be with us for some time to come. Having painted these as context issues for the second half, what are we doing about it as the MTN Group? We have in summary eight actions that are clustered under commercial, supply chain, network and financial resilience that we are focused on executing. Starting on the commercial side, obviously we are experiencing elevated inflation.
W e've always said that as part of the financial model for MTN is that, you know, over the medium term, we are growing, you know, service revenue above blended inflation. We do believe that we do need to look at selective pricing reviews across some of our markets, particularly in the higher inflation markets, as well as continuing to accelerate our efforts around CVM and moving towards much more personalized offers to our customers. We've invested a lot in that over the years and we should start benefiting from that going forward. That's the first action that we're taking. The second specific to South Africa, 'cause South Africa is really our device market, is managing device subsidies in particular, you know, at the lower end of the devices, 2G, 3G.
We did suffer some device margin erosion in the first half and this is something that Charles and Dineo will be managing in the second half. When it comes to supply chain, obviously with our scale, with partners, we are able to push forward for advanced purchase orders for both capacity, resilience and critical spare parts. And that's advanced from our team that are stationed in Dubai, headed by Dirk Karl, who heads up procurement for the MTN. Those will be two very specific initiatives that we're driving to mitigate some of the risks that we see. On the network, obviously, a large part of our network is under tower co-agreements. We saw that Nigeria was fairly resilient because we do get power pretty much as a service.
W here there are opportunities to renegotiate tower contracts, we are very focused on ensuring that they remain optimal for us in terms of being able to absorb some of the potential pressures on margins over time. In South Africa, as I mentioned up front, we have a multi-phase program to improve the resilience of the network that is under execution. The first three stages of it all deal with battery. The first phase is pretty much completed. The second phase will be completed. Charles is in the room, so you can take more of the questions. The second phase at end of this month, third phase end of September. In that time, obviously IHS is taking over operational control of our towers and are delivering power as a service.
Finally, on financial resilience, three main broad actions. One is continued expense efficiency initiatives. Absolutely gave you the update on what we achieved in the first half. Working capital, supply chain financing initiatives. These are also areas of focus. To the point that Tsholo raised, we have, you know, sufficient cash resources for us to continue to explore liability management of our 2024 and 2026 bonds as and when appropriate, as we want to bring down the hard currency exposures onto the balance sheet and continue to improve the profile of the group. As we mentioned in the SENS, you know, we are looking to upsize our DMTN note program.
It has been ZAR 30 billion and we're looking to upsize that to about ZAR 35 billion, you know, to create the flexibility that we would like at the Holdco level. N ow coming back to the investment case, this is a slide that I think I started with the full year 2021 full year set of results, as an underpin to the investment case that we put out to our stakeholders on why we believe that MTN is a growth story and is well-positioned, given its size and scale and its market positions, to be able to deliver digital and financial inclusion to many of the customers that we serve across the African continent while delivering, you know, superior returns for our investors.
I mean, on the left-hand side of the chart, you see the same chart that we had for the full year. We've now extended it by two quarters, basically continuing to track the pre-COVID and the post-COVID effect on the demand for data services. There is a narrative that says, you know, the data services were really expanded as a function of COVID lockdowns. What we can say as we look at our data is that we, you know, we're in a different position as MTN, different position within our markets, where we're seeing sustained demand for data services. As you can see in the kind of oval circles, we were looking at quarterly progression.
You know, in the time post lockdowns across our markets, we have seen an acceleration of 883 PB of data traffic across our networks, post what we see as the easing of lockdowns. We see a similar trend on fintech transaction volumes, which is an underlying driver or indicator of sustained growth, you know, over the medium term. Again, you know, 2.7 billion transactions in the period, you know, post the lockdowns. Actually, in this last quarter, it was ZAR 3.1 billion worth of transactions. The point that we've made around the investment case, that we see structurally higher demand in our markets for data and fintech, maybe quite uniquely from other markets and we believe still sustains the investment case. Hence we're making the investments in network and IT that we've made.
We've put in ZAR 17 billion. We are forecasting that we'll do ZAR 35 billion because we believe there's demand and then the return profile will come in line with our medium-term guidance. In conclusion, a couple of points I would like to make. You know, firstly, solid operational performance against a challenging macro. I think you will concur with that. We are continuing to execute on our strategic priorities and, you know, really pleased with the progress that we've made around the asset realization program in spite of the challenging markets. The financial resilience of the business not only maintained, it actually has been enhanced in the period. Better leverage across the group. We've got a healthier liquidity positions. We have the cash resources to do liability management to improve the financial profile of the business.
Whilst we do all of this, we're able to create, you know, shared value with our stakeholders more broadly, reducing the cost to communicate, increasing broadband coverage and contributing. We are convinced that, notwithstanding the headwinds that we see in the second half, we will maintain our medium-term guidance. Our medium-term guidance is a three-five year view. South Africa, as you'd have noted in our SENS outlook, that we said that if we see the same level of and same types of load shedding in the second half and the first half, we will slightly miss the guidance on the service revenue level. With all the initiatives that we have, we will look to maintain the EBITDA margin within the 39%-42% range.
Nigeria, we believe that we'll see a better revenue profile, Q3 and Q4 looking more like Q1 as opposed to Q2. Better growth there. Overall, we believe that we'll start to lap some of the pressures that we saw in a market like Côte d'Ivoire at the back end of this year into early next year. We come back to growth at the service revenue level, not just the underlying drivers. The board anticipates that we will be able to meet the dividend that we announced for full year of ZAR 3.30 per share when we report full year results in March of next year. We have a very strong cash position and, you know, the ZAR 3.30 is well covered by the earnings that are being generated and the cash that's coming to the group.
With that as, you know, final remarks, I just wanna thank you for listening. I'll call on Tsholo to join me on the stage. We do have in the audience here at 14th Avenue other executives. We have Charles Molapisi, who can talk to you about network resilience and Dineo Molefe, our CFO from South Africa. Jens, our group COO, is in the room. Mazen, our group CTIO. Ferdi, our group CRO, is also in the room. I see Nompilo and Kholekile, so we have pretty much most of our executive committee here in the room. They can help us take some of the questions. There are two questions that we anticipated we should answer right up front, 'cause we can feel the pent-up demand to ask those questions.
We will, we'll spare you the effort of asking the question and by providing you with the response. The first is really around the rates we repatriated out of Nigeria. I understand there's a fascination around that. For clarity, we took ZAR 4.5 billion of the ZAR 12 billion plus of repatriations came out of Nigeria. The rates in Q1, you know, the average was around 490. Q1 looked more like 480 and as we got to Q2, it looked much closer to 500. For those who are obsessed with that rate, there you have it. We've told you the rate at which we repatriated. One or two of you told me that there's an absolute fascination around the rates. We will help spare you the asking the question. The second is really around Telkom.
We did issue a cautionary weeks back, you know, once we had engagements between our boards and the Telkom board, where we issued a joint cautionary to progress work towards a proposition that we felt would be compelling for all stakeholders. Obviously under cautionary we can't say much and there has been a bit of press commentary today around Telkom. We provide no comment other than to say that we remain engaged in the processes that we agreed with Telkom to continue the process of evaluating a proposition and see where that ends over the next couple of weeks, et cetera. Trying to spare you all from asking a very obvious question that I think is pent-up demand.
With that, you know, open up for questions and, Thato, are you gonna direct the questions or how are you gonna do it?
Sure. I think we can start and see if there's any questions in the hall for those who've to come in. Louise?
Made the effort.
Hi, everyone. It's Louise from Investec. I'm gonna try my luck around and see if I can get more color on the Telkom transaction. I appreciate you can't really say a lot but maybe you can flesh out your rationale for the transaction. And also maybe around potential timelines, what to expect next, some of the next steps. That's the first question. The second question is around your wholesale business. It seems there's been a slight easing of revenues and performance in that business and it seems like it's slightly tracking below your Ambition 2025 strategy. What are some of the initiatives that you do have in place, especially outside of the South African environment, to drive that wholesale revenue opportunity?
On the third question around ESG, you know, how are you currently balancing the, you know, the energy efficiency targets and obviously related cost efficiencies in line with some of your longer term ambitions around energy efficiency? Thanks.
You've asked a whole bunch of questions that I can farm out to my team. The wholesale one, I think Jens will pick that one up. On the energy efficiency around the networks, I'm gonna ask Mazen Mroué, you know, to start and maybe, you know, Nompilo Morafo to top and tail. Maybe I'll start with the Telkom discussion rationale. As I mentioned specifically, we're not gonna comment on Telkom but what we can comment on is the global trends we are seeing that we say are going to come to our shores, whether we like it or not, at some point in time. I mean, there is a trend towards fixed mobile convergence globally as telecommunications transitions across the technologies, particularly the 4G to 5G transition.
You know, in a market like the U.S. you do see that it has consolidated. It used to be a four-player market. It's a three-player market for 300 million people. China is a three-player market for over 1.5 billion people. What that indicates to you is that these are businesses, business models that need enormous amount of scale to be able to profitably deliver the services while delivering the public good. Because this is really a private sector funded business if you think about it, you know, for a public good. It's capital intensive. You know, we're spending over, you know, approximately $2 billion of CapEx. So scale is gonna matter going forward. To the point that I raised that, fixed mobile convergence is a thematic that we're seeing in developed markets.
You are seeing it in Southeast Asia. We don't have to point you to some of the press commentary that's come. You can look also into Latin America, where you're seeing in-market consolidation. I mean, that influences some of our thinking without being specific, you know, on the deal that you can well figure out, you know, what the rationale. We do believe that there is a proposition that is good for all stakeholders in South Africa, not just shareholders. All stakeholders would be the only point. In terms of timing, I mean, we are on an agreed timeline path to evaluate the proposition as a joint team between ourselves, clean teams on our side, there's clean teams on the Telkom side.
We're gonna progress that work until we get to a position where we think there is a proposition or not. We're not really super time boxing ourselves to say we've got to come by a time next but obviously these things you want to work as fast as you can, so that you create certainty and lift the veil off the cautionary, so that all stakeholders can have more certainty going forward. Louise, I know that's not the answer you want but that's the only answer I can give you know, given the cautionary and the process that we've initiated jointly with Telkom. Wholesale. You mind if Jens comments on that?
Yeah. All okay.
Jens is in the audience.
Yeah, happy to share a few comments. I mean, overall, we are quite pleased with the development. What we need to bear in mind is that for the network as a service components that we are targeting outside South Africa, we've concluded two deals that have been announced, one in Ghana with Vodafone and the second one with Camtel in Cameroon. Other deals are pending but these deals take time to implement. For example, the Ghana deal is already live but it's operating on a regional trial basis. The Camtel deal is going through regulatory clearance. Other deals we can't disclose yet but we're happy with progress. It's broad-based, it's based across multiple markets and this is really a longer term ambition to build a sustainable network-sharing business across several markets.
The overall wholesale numbers we need to bear in mind are still very much dominated by the Cell C relationship in South Africa. We've talked to the unrecognized revenues. We've also, I think, talked to concessions that have been made in the context of the recap for Cell C. There is some impact in reduced growth on those numbers but we remain very, very confident that you know, we're benefiting from the new stability around Cell C and we will see sustained growth of that opportunity inside South Africa as well. Let me leave it there.
Mazen and Nompilo, our champions on ESG and net zero. Will you do a combo there?
Yeah, thank you for the question. On high level, the ESG is part of the core of Ambition 2025. We have already committed the road to zero by achieving 50% reduction by 2030 and achieving zero by 2040. From operational perspective, from working plan perspective, we have already set the targets based on 2021 and we started putting a plan to really achieve the results on annual basis. Currently, there is already plans in place to achieve what's really needed in terms of initiative for Scope 1 and Scope 2 and we're working with our partners in terms of tower costs for Scope 3. Nompilo, to add anything?
Thank you so much, Mazen. Without repeating what Mazen has just mentioned, it's important for us to mention that energy efficiency is part of our strategic process around Project Zero. We are aligned on SBTi in terms of how we want to respond to it. What I did want to mention strongly is that we're working with partners in this journey. It's a very gradual journey when you want to achieve energy efficiency and we are on that journey with all our partners and we're seeing bearing fruit in terms of our strategy and how we're gonna move forward.
Maybe I can just, you know, provide Louise with the way we look at the issues we face. Scope 1, Scope 2 are basically 20%. So it's 80% for the emissions are in Scope 3. The majority of that, if you wanna kind of, you know, look at the big numbers is that, you know, 80% of that would be the telco companies. So 80 on 80, just almost two-thirds is the telco companies. We're also committing in line with the commitments we've made. The two major telco companies within our portfolio, I mean, they're all U.S. listed. They also have similar requirements, so they're making also the investments, you know, in this quite challenged environment. As you well know that there is obviously the carbon offset opportunity, that is also, you know, something that's possible.
I mean, right now there is obviously quite a lot of pressure in South Africa in particular, because we are actually, you know, moving to alternative, non-grid power to be able to maintain the network availability.
Question for Tsholo now. Checking in the house. All right. For Tsholo, there are a couple of questions, actually. The first one is, "Can you provide a bit of color on the liability management which you've mentioned? Is the plan to use existing cash to take out all or part of the 2024s and the 2026s? Would you look to refinance a portion and maintain a presence in the international debt markets?
Yeah. I mean, I suppose as we've always indicated that our, you know, you know, focus will be on reducing that debt to a de minimis balance, obviously subject to market conditions and subject to availability of liquidity. We are exploring, you know, you know, a cash tender offer, which we will be, you know, coming to the market with, in due course. Other than that, we will be using the cash that we have been able to build up, you know, strong cash, as I indicated, upstream from markets, will really enable us to reduce that debt. We'll be looking at probably a cash tender offer on the first Eurobond. Yeah. We won't be going into the international m arkets at all. Yeah.
Then still with you, Tsholo, the expense efficiency program savings now at ZAR 5.6 billion, higher than the indicated ZAR 5 billion. Are there still pockets of cost savings available? Can the run rate from half one continue in half two?
Yeah. I mean, I suppose, you know, I always say that you can never do enough, when it comes to cost saving. We are mindful that the business is growing and therefore there will be some, you know, pressure on operating expenditure as well as some, you know, inflationary costs. So we have to be mindful of that and tighten our belt. You know, we obviously have a target higher than ZAR 1.9 billion, we've achieved that. There is still, you know, a bit of headroom in the second half of the year. We are pleased, as you saw in my slide, that we're seeing a very good, you know, a downward trend on our total cost to revenue ratio. It's actually in line with global trends when you see the total cost to revenue ratio that we have currently.
So we definitely. I know my colleagues will say, "Sjo, we in for another one," but w e definitely will continue with our focus on cost efficiencies, particularly due to the pressures that we're seeing in the market.
Thanks, Tsholo. Just looking up again. All right, the next one's on South African network. Just some questions on the contracts that we have with IHS. First of all, are you able to comment on the duration of the contracts with Power as a Service? Secondly, what level of network availability is IHS Towers obliged to provide to MTN? And are there any financial penalties for falling below this?
Good afternoon, everybody. The plan we have with IHS for the Power as a Service is a 10-year deal. It's also renewable after a period of 10 years. The targets that we have with them is based on stage 2, stage 4 load shedding. It's not stage 1, it's up to stage 4, 98.2% target for availability. Which means that where we are today, we need to put a number of interventions to be able to get to the stage 4 target of 98.2%. We're very comfortable that with the interventions that we have with them, we should be able to achieve a particular target.
Just still on there, Charles, there was a question that says: Load shedding has been a part of the landscape for a while. Why is it all of a sudden such a bigger issue?
I think we can reflect on this for a number of years. I mean, the last time Eskom met what you call the energy availability factor was July 2018. As we sit here today, we are on 61.7 EAF percentage from Eskom. If you double-click a little bit and check the numbers, the number of days for load shedding has been on the rise. 2018, 2019, you're sitting at about 12 days of load shedding annually. You go 8, 12, 18 and now in 2022, at midyear, we're on 72 days of load shedding. This is what we did last year. Already when you do your modeling, look at your numbers, you start to realize that if this continues, we're talking about a double number of, you know, 72 by 2.
But of course, the expectation is that with what we're doing on the interventions in terms of power, which I want to talk about, we should try and manage that risk. We have a number of phases. I think Ralph tried to cover that. Phase I, phase II and then phase IIIa and phase IIIb . Phase I is 1,000 sites that we've done battery rollout already. Phase II, there's about 2,243 sites. We're doing the batteries by end of this month. When we get to end of August, 9,000 of MTN network sites out of 12, out of 13 will have batteries. As you look at the availability, the batteries alone might not be enough a s the stages increases.
You need to be able to look at better autonomy, put rectifiers and eventually maybe look at what you're gonna do around gen set. We are particularly comfortable with the plan that we have. I think it's a question of how quickly we get material into the country and deploy.
Thanks, Charles. I think we probably need to get into the last few questions. There's a question on fintech. Can you give a bit more color, I think you did touch on it, Ralph, on the deceleration in fintech revenue growth? Where and from whom are you seeing pressure? And then there's another question that says, the evolution of advanced services increased during the period. Can you give an indication of how you see this ratio of advanced to basic going forward?
Yeah, as I mentioned, there are two factors that impacted revenues. One is our own efforts to cut the P2P pricing umbrella just to maintain our competitive position. It's something that we've always said that over time, that actually, you know, P2P, you know, would become less of the revenue pool, you know, over time. If you look at where the P2P pricing effects would be predominantly in Côte d'Ivoire. Actually, Côte d'Ivoire, if you look at an absolute level, they were down 38% as an opco in and of itself. They delivered service revenue of just 1%. Data was +27%, it was -38% on service revenue as we, you know, radically cut P2P pricing to maintain our competitive position. As I said, we are seeing the competitive position come through in a very solid base growth.
It 's up 37%. Traffic in that business is up, you know, 104%. That's a good lead indicator that the health and service revenue development will come towards the end of this year, early next year. The big one is actually in Côte d'Ivoire. Q2 by the impact of the 1.5% e-levy would have had a material impact in a market like a market like Ghana. And then obviously we've had the mobile money taxes also in Benin and Cameroon. Those would be the markets that would have been impacted. As I said, when I look at the underlying metrics of health, which is activity, I feel very comforted. You know, on the mix of advanced to basic, we've always said that the evolution in a steady state should get to 80/20, as opposed to the 20/80.
You know, we're progressing in that direction, you know, slowly, right now. The app development, I know the number sounds small, you know, 3%-6% but if we can get that to move up, you know, pretty quickly, as well as expand the merchant ecosystem, you know, long term, this fintech ecosystem will depend more on merchants than on agents, as it evolves. You know, watch the merchant numbers, watch the app penetration, watch the health of activity levels in the base to see where revenue recovery will be. The final point I would make is, you know, where you see how the markets come out of these taxes, have a look at places like Uganda, which, as I said, they had the 0.5% mobile money tax. They're now growing back at 20% in the half.
We feel pretty comfortable that we'll see revenue, you know, come back in a couple of quarters time.
Okay, as we wrap up, maybe the last two questions. The first one, SA voice revenues have declined substantially. What's driving that and do you see it stabilizing anytime soon? And then the last one, is there any chunky CapEx needs for 2023, 2024? Given the low leverage, what is the realistic dividend payout target going forward?
I'll take the last one there but Charles can quickly talk about voice. I think we're running out of time. Yeah.
Yeah, let me deal with the voice one. I think the first thing I'd like to do is to decouple the prepaid and the postpaid voice. We have a relatively decent performance on postpaid voice. We're struggling largely around prepaid voice. Our modeling for the beginning of the year was -8% decline of the prepaid voice. That was what we're targeting to achieve by end of the year. We looked quite decent, I think January, February, maybe March, you know, going down single-digit in terms of the decline. We started to pick up little bit of pressure around stage four and then stage six load shedding. A lot of this, I mean, there are a number of factors but the key factor is, in our view, the pressure on prepaid, generally macro-based.
Secondly, we believe that also the stage six was not very helpful. Those are really the key drivers on the prepaid voice. I want us to separate the distinction between the post and the pre, because the behavior in terms of the macro effect is also slightly different. Thanks, sir.
Yeah. Given that time is up, I'll try and be succinct. I mean, obviously on CapEx, we you know we try and manage it within an envelope and meeting a particular CapEx intensity profile. Tsholo always reminds us that we want it in the 15%-18% range for the type of growth that we're going in. I think as long as we're in that range and we have the CapEx you know pretty much where we are at the moment, I would argue that that's where you need to see the kind of CapEx envelope. We don't anticipate it to blow up or to come down materially. Obviously on, I mean the dividend, we have a new dividend policy where the board will apply its mind on a minimum dividend in a particular calendar year having assessed.
We're not going to go back to the points of a progressive dividend policy. Let's understand the cash position of the company at a particular point and then we commit to what we believe is a minimum we can deliver. Notwithstanding the fact that the Holdco leverage is fairly comfortable, we need that for shock absorbance and also for the ability to take advantage of opportunities as and when they present themselves. I think that's it. My timer says the time is up. I just wanna thank all the stakeholders who joined us here. Myself, Tsholo, Thato and the broader MTN team, thanks so much for joining us. Fo r some of the shareholders, we'll see you on the roadshow in the next couple of days. Broader stakeholders, we'll see you with our Q3 trading results in October.
Thanks very much. Much appreciated.