Ladies and gentlemen, I have the pleasure in welcoming you to our 27th annual general meeting, AGM, of the shareholders of MTN Group Limited, herein referred to as the company. Thank you for taking the time to be here today. It is always good to have our shareholders attending our AGM. We have not moved to holding the meeting in person yet, we still have to keep with this tradition until the conditions change. As a consequence of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, we as the board of MTN express our deepest condolences to the families of those who perished as a result of the pandemic. As we suffered the same fate as MTN, as we lost employees.
As a result of the restriction placed on public gatherings, the meetings will be conducted through electronic participation as provided for by the company's memorandum of incorporation and in terms of the provisions of the Companies Act 71 of 2008. I'm pleased to introduce the members of the board who are present today. Dr. Khotso D. Mokhele, Dr. Tsholofelo Molefe, Ms. Nompilo Morafo, Mr. Ralph Mupita, Mr. Ebenezer Asante, Mr. Serigne Dioum, Mr. Nkululeko Sowazi, Mr. Ralph Mupita, Mr. Lele Modise, Mr. Charles Molapisi, Mr. Tsholofelo Molefe, and the group company secretary, Thobeka Sishuba-Bonoyi. I also wish to extend apologies for Mcebisi Jonas and Ms. Noluthando Gosa, who could not be part of the proceedings today. I also extend a warm welcome to our group executives, company secretaries, external legal advisors, our sponsors, and external auditors who have joined us today.
Shareholders can refer to page seven of the notice, which contains a picture and biography of all directors. Today presents an opportunity to interact with the board and pose questions that you would like to know about the overall management and performance of the company within the limited time that we have. All questions and comments will be addressed during the question and answer sessions later in the meeting. To enable you to do so, we will show a video tutorial of how the platform works. The tutorial was sent with the link to all shareholders who registered to attend and those with proxies.
Welcome to the Lumi platform. While you wait for the meeting to start, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the different features available. Questions can be submitted at any time. To ask a text-based question, press the message icon. This will open a new screen. Type your question into the text box. Once you have finished typing, please press the arrow symbol to send. Please note, while you can submit questions, they may not be addressed until the relevant time in the meeting. If you wish to ask a question verbally, an audio question line will be available when the meeting begins. To use this service, please pause the broadcast on the Lumi platform, then click the link under Audio Questions. Allow microphone access to your browser if prompted. Then enter your name and press the green call button to connect to an operator.
The operator will authenticate the participant and will then take your questions and put you into a queue. The operator will tell you what instructions to follow to join the queue to ask a question. You will be able to hear the meeting while you are in the queue. When the chairman calls you are called upon to speak and your microphone will be unmuted. When you have finished speaking, please hang up and return to the Lumi platform. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll. When voting is open, if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, the polling icon will be visible. Selecting this icon will bring up a resolution or list of resolutions and voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to submit your responses as your vote is automatically recorded.
You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time the voting is closed. If documents are available at the meeting, you will be able to access them from the Documents tab. These can be downloaded to your device. The broadcast screen can also be maximized at any point during the meeting. Thank you for using the Lumi platform today. The meeting will commence shortly.
The results of the poll will be announced before the close of the formal business of the meeting. This allows shareholders an opportunity to vote on the resolutions during the proceedings, during the ordinary business of the meeting. In regards to the quorum, I should advise that 14 members are present at this meeting, either personally or by proxy, representing 2,993,670 ordinary shares in the company. I should advise that I'm holding proxies and letters of representation in respect of 1,538,201,564 ordinary shares. As the necessary quorum is present, I declare this meeting duly constituted.
The notice convening this meeting, as set out in the notice of the AGM booklet, has been sent to all registered shareholders as at the record date of Thursday, fourteenth April 2022, and I shall take the notice as read. Should there be any objections to this procedure, please use the messaging tab to post any written objections, or use the virtual microphone link that can be found on the home tab. As there are no objections, I will proceed with the ordinary business of the meeting. Before we transact with the ordinary business of the meeting, I confirm that the company has ensured that all provisions of the Companies Act, JSE listings requirements, Memorandum of Incorporation, as well as company policies in relation to this meeting and the resolution being passed at this meeting have been adhered to.
In order to reflect more accurately the views of all members, and to comply with the best practice, we will be conducting the voting on all resolutions proposed at this meeting by way of a poll. Shareholders would have logged into the platform with your pre-arranged usernames and passwords, which will enable you to submit your votes electronically during the meeting. You would have received a shareholder's user guide that explained how the voting platform works. For those shareholders that have previously submitted proxies, these proxies will be considered and no further action is required from you. It is necessary to appoint scrutineer of the process of the poll.
I nominate a representative of the transfer secretary, Computershare to scrutinize the voting process herein represented by Yvette Gilmore, and would also like to request that a representative of the external auditors of the company certify the results at the end of the meeting. Are there any questions or objections to this procedure? Please use the messaging tab to post any written objections. Use the virtual microphone link that can be found on your home tab.
Chair, there are no objections at the moment.
We now proceed to the business of the meeting and voting. You will see all resolutions that are being tabled at this AGM on the screen now. We have 20 ordinary resolutions and 14 special resolutions to be considered at this AGM. Special resolution number 1 has been individually separated and split into 37 individual resolutions. We will now open the voting on all resolutions to be voted on at this meeting before we proceed with the rest of the business at this meeting. Kindly indicate your responses on your devices by selecting the appropriate choice you wish to make for each resolution. The voting will stay open until the end of the formal proceeding, and at which point I will declare the voting closed on all resolutions, and then announce the results of all the resolutions.
We will now, in the interim, continue with the rest of the business of the meeting while voting occurs. I now call upon the Group President and CEO, Ralph Mupita, to give us an update on the business.
Thank you, Chair, and extending my welcome to all the shareholders who joined us on this virtual platform for the second year running. What I'll intend to do in the next 8-10 minutes maximum is to give you a view on the strategy and how we're progressing with it. Talk to a bit of a recap on the quarter one financial highlights. Just remind shareholders what our priorities are for the calendar year 2022. Cover some of the key selling points really around the outlook, how we see the year to go, and a little bit into 2023, and then come back to the points around our medium-term guidance. Moving to the next slide. If I just start with a recap on the strategy.
Since November 2020, we have been executing on what we now frame as the Ambition 2025 strategy. Which is a strategy that rests on four pillars, building the largest and most valuable platforms, driving industry-leading connectivity operations, creating shared value, and accelerating portfolio transformation. These elements in their aggregate really are driving three things. We think we are well-positioned to capture superior growth within the markets that we operate in. Given the level of digital and financial inclusion, we see our markets in growth territory and growth, you know, certainly over the medium term. For the company, the deleveraging in particular of the holdco balance sheet is an important and strategic priorities, and we have been looking at a faster deleveraging, particularly noting the dollar liabilities that we have at the holdco level.
The third aspect of the strategy, if we simplify it, is really looking at unlocking value. We remain of the view that the company has inherently a lot more value than is showing through the share price of the company. Obviously, as a management team and as a company, we need to reveal that to shareholders by how we perform. This is a strategy that we've been executing and as I said, it's just basically a recap of the detail that we had provided shareholders last year at the capital markets day, and covered in some detail the very specifics and the various targets that we have.
Moving to the next slide, just a recap on quarter one, which is now behind us. I think in the quarter one results, you know, you will, you know, see quite a lot of the trends. If we can move to the next slide, please, operator. These are results that you should be familiar with. You know, we take a view that, under the operating conditions, these were a solid set of results, where we saw the subscriber base beginning to rebuild, as we started having, you know, strong connections, particularly in Nigeria, where the SIM registration process, you know, had been stalled, pretty much in the first half of last year.
We saw good subscriber base growth in the last quarter in Nigeria, which, you know, came through again, in the first quarter of this year. Overall, across the business, subscriber growth now over 276 million subscribers. Within that mix, we're seeing very good growth in data subscribers, you know, up 13% to over 125. The mobile money business, what we sometimes talk about as fintech, growing very strongly, over 25% to just under 59 million subscribers. The two drivers of future value are looking very strong. On service revenue and profitability, again, we saw very good growth there within our guidance range, just under 16% constant currency basis of group service revenue.
We were able to eke out, as a function of both the expense efficiency program that we have, as well as driving operating leverage, we're able to see our EBITDA margin up, 2.2 percentage points. South Africa and Nigeria, as pretty much two-thirds of the business economically continuing to grow their service revenues in line with guidance and ensuring that we are growing profitability as you look at the EBITDA margin expansion. On the balance sheet side, we are again, encouraged by the progress that we're seeing in the balance sheet at the group level at 0.3 times. We do have medium-term, guidance around holdco leverage, which is at 0.9 times against a guidance of, 1.5 times or lower. We are progressing very well also within, the balance sheet.
We would have provided also shareholders with information of the liquidity profile of the company and both the cash resources of the group and facilities that are committed that we have access to, give us a very strong liquidity position in current challenged global macro conditions. Moving on to the next slide, in terms of our 2022 priorities. These are the priorities that we shared in the context of our full-year results in March. Nothing has changed. We're still focused on ensuring that our two largest markets, you know, grow in line with our medium-term guidance. When we talk about accelerating the growth, so given the opportunities that we see.
A big focus for us by the end of the year is to complete the fintech structural separation and securing our strategic but minority partners to support the acceleration of this business that we think there is actually structural growth prospects for our medium term, given the low level of financial inclusion across our markets. We will progress with initiatives to support the strengthening of the balance sheet and our own cash position with the asset realization program, all the cash upstreaming initiatives, the portfolio transformation, in particular, exiting the consolidated Middle East assets. That progress is one that we will continue to update stakeholders on.
Obviously, maintaining our network positions and ensuring that the capital we're allocating, and we are looking to allocate just over ZAR 34 billion equivalent of CapEx across our portfolios, to ensure that the core of our business, which is our networks, you know, remain second to none. We have several matters that we are working through that you're all familiar with that are complex mitigation matters, and these are progressing, and there's nothing at this particular meeting to report further than what we reported with the full-year results. We do continue with our efforts around ESG. We have a target, particularly around 2030 in terms of reduction, both in Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions, so that we get to net zero by 2040.
In terms of the outlook, just going on to the next slide. With the year to go, there are a couple of, you know, headwinds and challenges that we see ahead. I guess on the challenging macro, this pretty much goes without saying, every business is facing a similarly more challenging macroeconomic environment. Occasioned not just by COVID, but the conflict that we now see within Ukraine. Rising interest rates, rising inflation and a much stronger dollar are putting pressure against, you know, currencies. Fiscal conditions in many of the markets we operate in, not globally, are tightening, and that's putting pressure on emerging markets currencies in particular. Within our three largest markets, there's some very specific issues that we need to carefully navigate.
Some of them in South Africa is really around the load shedding and experiencing level 2-4 quite systematically in the last couple of months. We are arranging ourselves in ensuring that we have the network resilience, and we're pleased with the progress that we see around generators and battery deployments that we're looking to complete by August of this year to ensure that we keep the uptime of our network and the customer experience high. In Nigeria, obviously we're navigating the new NCC directive around NIN linkages to SIM. We did speak about the revenue impact. We are monitoring this very closely as we look at the data, particularly in the last couple of weeks in May. We are encouraged around the verification process from NIMC.
Obviously this is still too early to talk about patterns and how we see this progressing. We will have a much clearer set of data points by the time we get to the half year results to communicate. We do have a positive, which is the PSP now has been launched. We've been working on this PSP for several years and, you know, really pleased to be saying that we have launched commercially. I think we're on day four or day five now of commercial operations, so very early days, but it is a key accelerant for our fintech growth, you know, over the medium term.
In Ghana, we are navigating the early days of a new E-Levy, which is applicable to all transactions, electronic transactions, whether they be fintech or bank-led, and these have been implemented since the first of May 2020. I think on the outlook, I think the one thing that we remain of a strong view is that the demand structurally for higher data and fintech services remains over the medium term. If there are some short-term headwinds driven by some of the points that are out here, we still believe that structural story of low internet adoption, low financial inclusion, creates a growth opportunity for the MTN Group, given the footprint and the size and scale of the business.
This point around our view on the growing or structural demand for data and fintech services encourages us, as we move to the next slide, to take a view on our medium-term guidance, which we have reaffirmed, as with the Q1 trading update. Service revenue at the group level, South Africa, Nigeria. How we see the acceleration of fintech platform, the holdco leverage, our progress and asset realization, and the return improvement that we anticipate for the company over the medium term. Chair, I'll pause there and just thank shareholders for listening with that summary view of the performance of the company.
Thank you, Ralph. We'll now proceed to the presentation of audited annual financial statements, directors' report, audit committee report, Social, Ethics and Sustainability Committee. Consolidated audited annual financial statements of the company and its subsidiaries, as approved by the Board of Directors of the company, including the directors' report, the audit report, the audit committee report, and the external auditor's report for the year ended 31st December 2021, have been distributed as required and are being presented to the shareholders. Copies of the integrated report, which contain the approved version of the annual financial statements, have also been distributed to shareholders present at this meeting. The Social, Ethics and Sustainability Committee report, which details the activities of the committee for the year ended 31st December 2021, has been distributed to shareholders and is presented at this meeting.
Are there any questions regarding the business presentation, the annual financial statements, reports?
No questions on those, Chair.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now respond to questions from shareholders on the special and ordinary resolutions contained in the notice.
Chair, we have a question from Mihlali Ntsabo , and his first question is: With regards to the audit committee appointments, resolutions 2.1-2.4, given the reportable irregularity identified by the external auditors, were the directors, Mrs. Sindi Mabaso-Koyana, Nosipho Molope, Noluthando Gosa, and Vincent Rague, being seconded for the audit committee, sufficiently evaluated for their suitability in continuing in this pivotal committee? How are they being held to account for this oversight?
Can I then ask the President and CEO to respond to the question?
Yeah. Thank you, Chair. The reportable irregularity noted in our financial accounts has nothing to do with the audit committee members. It was to do with a executive committee member who signed a contract without the requisite authority. That reportable irregularity has nothing to do with the members of the committee. We did take proactive action as a management team supported by the board and the audit committee to ensure that the reportable irregularity you know does not actually come through, which is what we will see in our accounts. I wanted to make sure that that reportable irregularity is not attached with members. It was much more related to a member of the executive committee.
Thank you.
The next question is also from Mafura Ntuboe. It is around the remuneration policy. Please advise on previous shareholder concerns or suggestions to review the LTI vesting term to be revised from three to five year to stem short-termism.
May I ask, the Lead Independent and the Chair of RemCo, Khotso Mokhele to respond.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We currently have a policy that takes us to a three-year vesting period. All the issues that were raised by shareholders in the previous cycle, we dealt with, and all those responses were included in this current integrated report. We remain convinced that our current LTI policy is the appropriate one for the company.
Thank you, Khotso Mokhele. Any other question?
Yes, Chair. There's another question from Mafura Ntuboe. Remuneration implementation report is what it's around, and it is, advise on what targets are set for team performance component, as this is currently lumpy and vague. Can RemCo advise on how RemCo revised STI and LTI stretch targets to account for both the positive and negative effects of the COVID pandemic? The quantum of the CEO's current pay and its increases is unsustainable in normal conditions.
If I respond, Mr. Chairman, the current CEO compensation is as per appropriately benchmarked basic pay, and according to the short-term and long-term incentive schemes as approved by shareholders. We, as a remuneration committee, are satisfied that when targets are approved by the committee, they are properly and duly considered, and we are confident that the stretches that are included in those targets are appropriate.
Thank you, Khotso Mokhele. Are there further questions?
Chair, at the moment there are no further questions.
You'll also note that we might not be able to go through all the questions. If there are any questions arising, we'll respond and publish the responses on our website after the meeting, if that is deemed necessary. Yeah. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your participation. I would like to remind shareholders who have not voted as yet to please cast your votes now. If you are registered to vote but have not received your voting link via email or SMS, please inform the moderator via the Q&A in Lumi. Andre, are there any shareholders who should still exercise their votes?
Chair, there are no more shareholders to exercise votes.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the voting proceedings and I now declare the voting closed. We now proceed with displaying the results for each resolution which has been tabled at this meeting. On the screen you have resolution from resolution 1.1 to resolution 3.3, and they are all carried. We also have on the screen ordinary resolution number 2.4, the special resolution 1.2, all carried. On the screen you have special resolution 1.2, special resolution number 1.12. All carried. On the screen we have special resolution number 1.13, special resolution 1.23. All carried. On the screen we have resolution 1.24, resolution 1.34. All carried. On the screen we have special resolution number 1.35, special resolution number 5. All carried.
Ladies and gentlemen, as all the business on the agenda has been dealt with, I now formally close the proceedings of the 27th annual general meeting of MTN Group Limited. As that concludes our discussions, I'd like to take the opportunity once more to thank you again for your attendance and urge you to continue to attend our events. Thank you.