Good afternoon to everybody, and welcome to the Innovation Center, and for those online, to our 2025 full year financial results. My name is Thato Motlanthe, and I look after the group investor relations. Welcome to all of those who've come into the room in the Innovation Center and all those who are on our platforms, YouTube, LinkedIn, and particularly our MTN colleagues across our markets who make all of this possible. Before we get into the order of business for today, let's just run through the usual housekeeping. First of all, you should be seeing our disclaimer and safe harbor. That covers really the presentation for today. For those physically in the room, please note that we do have the emergency exits. Just to remind you, we're all about health and safety. There's one at the top left.
In terms of how I'm facing, and to my right as well. For connectivity, you should be seeing the Wi-Fi details. I'll just give you a second to connect if you haven't already. Then on the social networks, if you plan to share some of the updates online, please do use our hashtag, which is #MTNAnnualresults25. You can tag our corporate accounts, @MTNGroup on X and @MTN on LinkedIn. There's also a QR code for the full results booklet on display. Again, I'll just give you a second to scan if you haven't already. Finally, and this is the good stuff, those who are here physically, we do have refreshments afterwards. Please do join us. We've got some good stuff for you.
As we turn to the business of the day, I think today's presentation is covered under the theme Accelerating Impact, Empowering Africa. This really comes at an important time for MTN as we look at the 2025 results. We also think about the impact that MTN makes on our nation states and the peoples of the continent, and it really gives us inspiration as we move forward and the many things that we look forward to doing. With that context in mind, let me just turn to today's agenda. You'll see on the screen, we'll run through the usual order with a little bit of a tweak. We'll start with the FY highlights that Ralph will run through, and it'll also cover some operational and strategic highlights.
Tsholo, who's our CFO, will come and do the financial performance before handing back to Ralph. He'll run us through a strategy transition to Ambition 2030, before he concludes with some priorities that we have for the year. Just a reminder for all of those who are on the platforms, particularly the webcast, please do use that platform for Q&A. Just post them on that platform and they will be read out. Just as we get into the business of the day, it is my pleasure to welcome our Group President and CEO, Ralph Mupita. Thank you.
Thato, thanks very much, and good afternoon to all of you who've joined us here at Fourteenth Avenue, our home here at MTN, and those who are joining us from the various media platforms, and to the MTN-ers who have delivered the results that Tsholo and I have the pleasure to share with the broader investment community, media, as well as broader stakeholders. I trust you've had an opportunity through some of the opcos. We've seen a really good turnaround in a market like Zambia. Strong results coming in through Cameroon. Saw a very strong commercial performance driven by us focusing on driving leading customer experience.
Today, you've got to fight for the customer and supported by, you know, material investments that we've made into our network, close on to ZAR 38 billion, ex leases is the amount of CapEx we've put into our networks. The commercial performance has been excellent, as I mentioned earlier. We've had a relatively benign macro, in the last 12 months. We saw currencies quite stable and actually strengthen, in some regard, particularly the cedi. The naira also pulled back from the very high devaluation levels it was at, and we saw inflation start to moderate across markets. The underlying strong commercial performance translated into very strong financial results, as Tsholo will share. Strong earnings, strong free cash flow, and returns above our own guidance.
The third message is really around shareholder remuneration, and starting with last year's dividends, the board has declared ZAR 5.00 per share as dividend. We had indicated in our open policy framework for dividends of 2025 and before that we would do a minimum of ZAR 3.70. Through the strong cash generation that we've been able to deliver, we're pleased that we're able to declare the ZAR 5.00. That's 45% above the prior dividend of ZAR 3.45. We are also announcing with the results in this sense an enhanced shareholder remuneration framework that encompasses both cash dividends and share buyback, and I'll come back to that a little bit later.
Number four, we're now at the end, as of end of 2025, we came to the end of Ambition 2025. We're looking to the next five years and are announcing that we are pivoting to Ambition 2030, which is essentially, you know, streamlining the execution that we had, but fundamentally still the same strategy that is driven by an investment case that says there is a significant digital and financial inclusion opportunity across our markets. The fifth is that we are reaffirming our medium-term guidance. We've made tweaks to the return metric as well as to leverage metrics, which I'll come to a little bit later. In terms of commercial momentum, we crossed over the 300 million subscriber mark.
We ended the year just over 307 million subscribers across our market, seeing very strong net additions, particularly in the second half of the year. H2 much stronger than H1. We saw that growth in not only subscribers, but also active data subscribers. This is the data era, and we're seeing, you know, data subscriber growth. Coming back to subscribers, we pretty much were adding in the last five years, 10 million subscribers, you know, per year. That's been very pleasing for us to see that growth being sustained. You can see there in the data traffic, which gives you a sense of the demand for our solution, that's grown at about 27%.
24.7 petabytes of data that you know have come through you know in our network in 2025. On the Fintech side, again, strong growth that we've seen. Monthly active users just shy of 70 million. But I think it's quite impressive how much of the transaction value that is moving through that platform. $500 billion of transaction value. And when you look at it on a constant currency basis, just under 38%. Reported basis is more like 55%. A lot of transactions that is going through the MTN network at the moment. Very strong commercial performance we've seen in 2025. As I mentioned, that translated into very strong financial results.
I start with service revenue, and Sulu will break down the service revenue bearers a little later. The 22.7% constant currency service revenue growth is the best that we've had since 2008. It's been a long time coming to see the level of growth in a constant currency at those pleasing levels, and materially well above our own guidance and also well above inflation. Inflation across our markets was more around the order of about 13% on a blended basis. Almost 10% headroom of service revenue delivered against the blended inflation in our markets. Just focusing on the return metric, as I mentioned, earnings very strong. Adjusted headline earnings per share above 67%. You see it there on the screen at ZAR 13.59 per share.
Operating free cash flow also, you know, coming on strong. It's showing growth of, you know, almost 82%. As I mentioned, our return metric, which we've used up to 2025, above our guidance of 25%. Very pleasing to see that. As I mentioned, the dividend declared, which will be paid in April, is 500 cents per share. Talking about the enhanced shareholder framework, which has been some time a work in progress. We did communicate in 2024, when we had the challenges in Nigeria of a rapidly devaluing naira and escalating inflation, and the impact that had on our leases, and we went into negative equity. We set forward our 5-point plan.
At that stage, we had conversations with the investment community that at the point in time that we had restored distributable reserves in Nigeria. Secondly, that we were confident that we're able to procure dollars for dividend repatriation, we would come back to the market with an enhanced shareholder framework, which is what we announced with our results. This medium-term shareholder remuneration framework has a couple of elements that I hope I can describe them super clearly to yourselves. The first is that we're looking at an annual distribution of 40%-60% of equity free cash flow as shareholder remuneration. Within that construct, we're going to have a minimum cash dividend of 40% of that equity free cash flow.
We will look to a further 20%, which could be in cash as cash dividends or as part of a buyback program. In terms of that buyback program, the board has approved a buyback program over a three-year period of ZAR 6 billion, which we will look opportunistically to acquire our shares and permanently cancel those shares. If you look at where our share price is today and you look at the shares outstanding, that's approximately like 1.7%, for those who want to round up 2% of outstanding shares, that would look with that program. Obviously, once we complete, we can have a relook of whether we want to further you know increase that program.
Obviously, we want to execute all of this within our capital allocation framework, which we've further simplified to have four pillars, which I'll talk to a little bit later. Just moving to the operational results. Let me start off with South Africa, and I wanted to start off with the market context of South Africa. I think there are three points in market context that I would like to highlight. I think the South African consumer in SA has been in okay shape. Let's not say the South African consumer is in a great shape or a bad shape. Let's just say okay. But the consumer behavior that we've been seeing is that actually there's a lot of disposable income that's now going on to areas such as online gambling or gaming, if you wanna call it that.
We think that this is probably a structural change, and we're seeing it across several markets where this is becoming kind of more prevalent. So it isn't a one-off. It's actually structural. As I said, the SA consumer has not been in bad shape. But the competitive intensity that we've seen in the prepaid market, which we spoke about last year, you know, we saw it continuing into the final couple of quarters of 2025. So the story of MTN SA is one of two sides. There is firstly the SA prepaid where it's under pressure. We saw service revenue there degrowth of 4.4%. It makes up 52% of service revenue. So when you have degrowth there, you've got to climb quite a bit to end up at 2% service revenue.
Because the consumer, postpaid business and enterprise all have grown pretty strongly. That's a market where we said, with our H1 results in August, that we foresaw a couple of quarters where the initiatives that we want to bring in, mostly at a commercial level, sales and distribution, will take us a couple of quarters before we start to see green shoots or getting back into growth. I think you can anticipate that Q1 and Q2 will still be difficult for MTN SA as those initiatives start to gain traction. Thirdly, Yolanda, Dineo, and the broader team have their eyes very fixed on ensuring that we do see this prepaid recovery. As I mentioned, postpaid, enterprise, wholesale pretty much where we expected it to be.
The pressure is on prepaid, and therefore, it's a focus for us. We did put in sufficient CapEx, just under ZAR 7 billion of CapEx, order of magnitude 13% CapEx to sales, which is in line with peers. And the network, you know, has had some investment, so we thought that that level of investment is sufficient to maintain a high-quality network. Those are the key points I'd like to make around South Africa. Coming to Nigeria. Nigeria released results a couple of weeks ago, and many of you have digested those results. Fantastic set of results. Again, starting with the macro, a couple of key call-outs. I think the first is the tariff increase that came at the back end of Q1. We started to see it flow through into Q2 results and so forth.
Inflation started to moderate. More broadly, the naira was a lot more stable. In fact, it did appreciate against the dollar. Oil prices, you know, were in the $60s. We'd also renegotiated the IHS contract at that time. All those benefits from that five-point plan flowed through, supported by commercial execution to deliver the stellar results that Nigeria, you know, put 55% service revenue growth. Very strong growth in terms of data and free cash flow generation has been very strong. We put a lot of CapEx into the network. We have committed to the authorities that we'll also be dealing with quality of service issues. You know, the quid pro quo to get the tariff increase was to ensure that Nigerian consumers are experiencing high-quality data networks.
Our focus, you'll see that the CapEx intensity in Nigeria is at the top end of the range, closer to, like, 19%. A lot of that was to deal with QOS in several clusters, Abuja and other areas where we had picked up that there was improvement needed around the quality of service, quality of experience. Very pleasing results, you know, coming out of Nigeria. Just talking to markets more broadly. Again, as I mentioned, this is a broad-based set of delivery from across the markets. SEA, which a big part of SEA is Uganda. You can see that the subscriber growth close on to 10%. Again, you know, very strong Q2, sorry, Q3 and Q4 coming through.
Good growth in active data subscribers, as well as on our mobile money platforms, our fintech platforms, and similar dynamic that we see in WECA, growth in WECA. A little bit of pressure, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire. Côte d'Ivoire for us has now become a business where we're starting to see the connectivity business improve. Still some challenges on the fintech business. Overall, the WECA results, which also have embedded in them the Ghana results coming out, are pretty strong. Talking about fintech, as I mentioned, you know, good growth, close to 70 million monthly active users. You have a transaction value that's close to $500 billion. What has been pleasing is that, the advanced services continue to grow quite rapidly at 40.5% service revenue growth.
We've always said that the future of this business is going to be the advanced services. The basic services, yes, they remain important, but if you look three to five years out, you have to have a strong base of the advanced services, payments and e-commerce, bank tech, and so forth, remittance. Those are the services that will stand us in good stead to sustain a good investment story for the fintech business. Creating Shared Value has always been a key pillar and a differentiator for MTN. The way we express it and measure it is around our ESG responsibility, which is mainly around the role of reducing greenhouse emissions, sustainable societies, broadband coverage, as well as having diversity. There we're targeting women in the workforce and good governance. On ESG responsibility, good progress on Scope 1, Scope 2.
You know, quite strong performance in terms of greenhouse gas reduction. Part of that growth that you see as 48% is some SEA emissions that have moved into Scope 3. All our measures are on a Scope 1 and Scope 2 basis, but overall, seeing good growth there. Broadband coverage, just a smidgen off our target of 95%. We did decelerate rural connectivity in Nigeria in 2024 and a little bit of 2025. We'll really catch up. That's the real delta there in terms of the 94 versus the 95. Pretty much there. Good progress around diversity and inclusion.
Some of you will well remember when the 45 at the beginning of the strategy was 39, so pretty much adding 1 percentage point every year into the workforce in terms of women representation. We're still maintaining our target to 2030 or 50%, so we're making good progress. There's always narrative around the cost of data. I guess it'll always be that narrative will be permanently with us. When you look at effective rate per gigabyte, that's actually come down just over 14% on a blended base across our markets. So giving a lot more value to our customers as well. Just against the guidance, before I hand over to Tsholo, we're pretty pleased with, you know, the delivery against guidance as of the end of last year.
As I mentioned, you know, SA, we're at the bottom end of our guidance range there. That's why we have it as amber. Fintech, advanced services growing strongly and but the basic services were a little bit lower, so we marked ourselves there amber. On asset realization, amber because we didn't hit the 25, but I think there's good rationale for not hitting the 25. Two big asset realizations were in the original targets. The one was selling Nigeria further down.
There was another 11% still to go, so we didn't do that for good reason that we communicated last year. Obviously IHS. You know, we have had a strategic repivot on IHS. If you take those out, I think on the asset realization, a job well done by the teams that are focused on that. With this, let me pass on to Tsholo, and I'll be back to talk to you about strategy and outlook.
Thanks. Thank you very much, Ralph. Good afternoon, everyone, joining us for these pleasing set of results. We are very pleased to present a very strong financial set of results for the full year 2025. I think before I do that, I just want to take you through some of the key messages that are coming out of these financial results, and I'll unpack, you know, the themes as I walk you through the presentation. I think the first point to make here for us is that we've seen a very sustained momentum across all the key financial metrics for 2025, and this was really reflected in the strong top-line growth, a very margin expansion, and a broad-based improvement across our financial KPIs.
We saw further improvement in the quality of our earnings, also supported by a more stable macroeconomic environment in several of our key markets. The second point here is that we kept a very strong focus on our expense efficiency program, and this resulted in a delivery of ZAR 3.6 billion in the year, exceeding the target that we had set for ourselves, demonstrating the ongoing structural benefits that have come with the program. Thirdly, I think as you can see, our free cash flow generation has strengthened materially during the year. I will unpack this later, but in short, it also reflects the improved profitability as well as tighter working capital management and a continued focus on our cash discipline across the group.
The fourth highlight here, as Ralph indicated, is really on our return on equity, which surpassed our medium term target of 25%, reaching 25.6%. Finally, we sustained the healthy balance sheet and financial flexibility that remains central to our operational resilience and our strategic execution. I think with that context then, let me just take you through the salient points, firstly, in terms of the summary of our group financial state P&L. To call out just a few on this slide here, as you can see, group service revenue on a reported basis grew 22.9%, reaching ZAR 218.5 billion. In constant currency, we saw a similar trend at 22.7%, which was firmly ahead of our medium term guidance as well.
This really underscores the robust top-line performance across our African footprint. Reported EBITDA increased by 64% on a reported basis, with pleasing growth of 36.8% in constant currency. This really reflected the strong revenue momentum as well as we continued with our margin expansion, achieved also through disciplined cost management. In constant currency, our EBITDA margin improved to 44.5%, which was a five-point-four percentage improvement. This really translated into a meaningful earnings before interest and tax, which more than doubled year on year. This reflected also an improvement across. I think, from a constant currency perspective, from an EBIT perspective, we achieved 61%.
Below the line, you will notice that our finance costs declined by about 53%, reflecting firstly prudent balance sheet management and lower FX impacts that we saw, particularly in Nigeria, where we saw the stability of the naira during the year against the dollar. There were also gains from the appreciation of the Ghana cedi in the year. The underlying finance charges, therefore, excluding FX impact, grew by 6.7% year-over-year. The tax expenses were up by about 190%, just over 190%, and this was mainly reflecting our much improved profitability, but there were also impacts from a nondeductible expense perspective and some unrecognized deferred tax assets in the main. Non-controlling interest, as you can see, also a significant improvement due to the recovery mainly of MTN Nigeria.
Then at the bottom line, you see attributable profit increasing to ZAR 20.3 billion, reinforcing the recovery in the earnings and the profitability again across the group. I mentioned the return on equity as well, where we saw an improvement year-on-year of 6.9% to 25.6%. Now, if I move on to the next slide here, just very important to show the pleasing sequential progression that we saw in our financial key metrics as we progress into the second half of the year. I think just to call out a few key KPIs here very briefly, you'll see our service revenue accelerating to 23% in the second half from 22.4% in the first half, and then EBITDA increased in the second half with margins remaining robust, supported by ongoing cost discipline that I mentioned earlier.
In terms of leverage, you'll see that the consolidated net debt to EBITDA improved further to 0.3x by the year end, while HoldCo leverage reduced to 1.3x by the year end, both comfortably within our targeted thresholds. This was also supported by very strong cash generation and upstreaming from the OpCos, which accelerated from ZAR 8.2 billion in the first half to ZAR 9.2 billion in the second half, totaling ZAR 17.4 billion for the full year. Now, if I can turn briefly to our two large markets, starting with South Africa. Overall, as indicated, we saw service revenue increase of 2%, largely supported by the growth in data, wholesale as well as enterprise related. This comes at the back of a highly competitive environment in the market, particularly within prepaid.
Data revenue grew by 4.5% year-on-year, while voice declined by 4.2%, which was really consistent with the competitive pressures that I mentioned in the South Africa voice market, especially on prepaid. Again, as Ralph indicated, there's plans in place to make sure that we turn this around. As we always say, it's not a quick fix. These things take time, but the team is well underway to make sure that we make the right progress here. Within the other service revenue bucket, you can see that we saw an increase of 3.1%, and this includes wholesale revenue that grew by 2.5% as well as enterprise ICT and bulk SMS growing by 8.5%.
Enterprise on its own grew quite significantly by just over 13%. EBITDA declined by approximately 10% here, with margins reducing from 37.4%- 34.6%, and this was impacted by higher share-based payments due to the share price movement on the staff cost as a line. Excluding these, EBITDA margin would have been around 35.8%, an OpEx increase of just over 4% year-on-year. I must say that MTN SA did a very good job in terms of keeping the expense growth in check, and I will share that later on as I talk about our group expenses.
In terms of capital expenditure, MTN South Africa spent about ZAR 6.8 billion during the year, with CapEx intensity of 13.4%. The reduction is following the conclusion of the network resilience program that we had back in 2024. For SA, the OpCo continues to implement the initiatives that are needed, as I indicated, to get back on track. If I can move on to MTN Nigeria briefly. Most of you will have seen the results. Safe to say that we've seen a very strong set of results from Nigeria with revenue, service revenue up 74%, data growing by 74%, and voice also performing strongly, growing by 42%.
Alongside operational execution, you'd recall the phased pricing revisions that were implemented during the year and which provided a meaningful boost to service revenue growth. Most of these benefits came through in the second half of the year. On the back of the top line growth, we saw EBITDA margin more than doubling as well over 100% increase, and as a result, we saw an EBITDA margin expansion of 13.6 percentage points to almost 53%. In terms of capital expenditure, MTN accelerated investments to ZAR 11.9 billion during the year. You'd recall that last year they had reduced in 2024 CapEx by almost 53% due to the macroeconomic environment.
We're really delighted with the turnaround we're seeing in Nigeria, particularly with the resumption of the dividend and the cash upstreaming to Group. If I can just briefly touch on the fintech business as well. We saw service revenue increase by 23.2% in 2025, with advanced services around 40%. This aligns with our strategy to grow the segment faster, which has increased its contribution overall to total fintech revenue to now 29% from 25% last year. This really supports the stickiness and overall quality of our ecosystem, including the benefits of profitability and the cash flow that we see.
In that regard, we've seen also EBITDA margin improvement in fintech, of 2.1 percentage points, to 42.8%. I just want to touch briefly on the rest of the markets, portfolio, which I think, is important. You will see that we're still reporting, you know, in terms of SEA and WECA, and as we have communicated, going forward, we'll reporting in terms of Francophone and, SEA Ghana, and, as well as the rest of the, east, southeastern African regions. In terms of the broader markets, I think the key call-out here is to indicate that both SEA as well as WECA grew their service revenue above inflation and also saw a margin expansion.
You'll notice that SEA service revenue increased by 21% against blended inflation for the region of 12%, driven by strong growth in data as well as fintech, and then the EBITDA margin growing to 47.5%. Within the portfolio, we've got MTN Uganda that grew service revenue at around 13.5 percentage points to ZAR 17.7 billion with margin improvement of 1.6 percentage points. When we move to WECA, you'll see that they also grew service revenue by 18.5% versus blended inflation of 8.9%. MTN Ghana, once again, within the WECA region, led the performance with growth in service revenue of 35.9% and a margin improvement of 3.2%, reaching 60% EBITDA margin overall.
It is fair to say that overall, the markets portfolio also produced brilliant results, and I think it's also worth mentioning some of the markets within our portfolios where we've seen an improvement. For instance, we've seen great strong results coming from Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire on the connectivity side, Sudan, South Sudan, Zambia, as well as Rwanda, where these Opcos have shown a pleasing turnaround and trajectories in their financial performance. Moving on to the group expenses, which were well managed again during the financial year, well below our blended inflation environment. As you can see, we saw total group expenses growing by 9.3%.
Looking at the composition of the expenses, you'll see that cost of sales increased by 4.5%, and this reflects in part the lower device cost of sales, particularly in South Africa, as the business continued to optimize their device strategies as well as reduce the exposure to lower margin revenues. Operating expenditure increased by 13%, which was also slightly below blended inflation, driven mainly by employee expenses, largely due to increase in the share-based payments as a result of the share price appreciation. We also saw an increase on the network-related cost as we continue to invest in network quality as well as capacity. I think importantly, as I indicated, these are also below blended inflation overall.
We also delivered, as I said, ZAR 3.6 billion in savings during the year, taking our cumulative achievement to ZAR 7.4 billion over the three-year period since we started on EEP 2.0 in 2020 in 2024. This is really reflected in our total cost to revenue ratio, which improved from 61% in 2024 to now 55.6% in this financial year. The majority of the savings, approximately 64% of those, particularly came from network and IT as we continue to drive our focus on structural efficiencies.
We also saw, from a market perspective, a significant contribution coming from Nigeria, largely due to the lease renewals and as I indicated, a portion coming from MTN South Africa as well. Just to move on to our earnings per share, and if I can walk you through the reconciliation to adjusted headline earnings per share. Starting at the top, you'll see that our attributable earnings per share improved meaningfully in the year 2025, reflecting the strong recovery in operating performance, particularly in Nigeria, alongside a more stable macro environment relative to the prior year. Reported attributable earnings per share for the year was 0.11 ZAR compared to a loss position in the previous financial year.
The most significant adjustment here related to impairment charges, primarily associated with goodwill, property, plant, and equipment, and associates, which amounted to ZAR 0.27 per share in this year. You would have seen from the MTN Ghana results as well, and associated group announcement at the time, the effects of an IFRS 16 adjustment relating to the prior year for the group. This related to ZAR 0.12 per share, and it was largely due to the hyperinflationary impacts that rolled it up to group. After adjusting for impairments and other disposal related items, basic headline earnings per share increased by ZAR 12.74, representing a very strong year-on-year improvement.
However, you'll see that our headline earnings per share were still impacted by some non-operational items, and therefore, as we adjust for this, we saw an increase to 1,359 cents per share on our adjusted headline earnings per share, which was really an increase of 67.7%. Just briefly on our capital expenditure, our business continues to grow, so it's important that we continue to invest for growth. We spent ZAR 38.5 billion, translating to a CapEx intensity of 17%. The increase in CapEx was primarily driven by the accelerated network deployment that mainly came from Nigeria as the business accelerated investment this year, as I mentioned earlier, in addition to Ghana as well, particularly also bolstered by the stronger Ghana cedi against the rand.
From a geographic perspective, the majority of the investment was directed towards the broader markets with SEA and WECA making up a total of 47%, together, in terms of total to Group spend, and the balance of that coming from Nigeria, which was 31%. By category, the major CapEx deployment, as I indicated, was coming from our networks and 25% of that coming from IT systems, in the main. Moving on to the free cash flow. Let me now just turn to how we have fared, and this is the most pleasing results as well relative to historical trend.
In 2025, you will notice that operating free cash flow before spectrum and license payments increased by almost 38.2% to ZAR 57 billion, underpinned by a significant improvement in EBITDA, disciplined working capital management, and a continued focus on our cash generation across the group. This improvement in our free cash flow generation was also delivered against a tick-up in our capital investment, which I mentioned previously. In the second half of the year, we also accelerated some efforts in terms of working capital management, where we improved data collection across our markets and continued to optimize on our inventory and payables. In South Africa, specifically, we advanced our cash release initiatives, including the ongoing handset receivables financing, as well as supply chain financing initiatives.
After accounting for spectrum and licenses as well as interest and taxes, we saw a consolidated free cash flow for the group up to ZAR 26.9 billion, almost ZAR 27 billion. This was an increase of more than four times relative to the previous year. As Ralph noted earlier on about the enhanced shareholder remuneration framework, which will really be based on our equity free cash flow. We paid about ZAR 5.3 billion in dividends to non-controlling interest, but this also included a ZAR 2.5 billion wind-up dividend relating to Zakhele Futhi, and this resulted in our equity free cash flow growth of about just over 380% to around ZAR 22 billion.
On the whole, this represents very strong recovery in terms of cash generation compared to the prior year, and really provides us with a solid foundation in terms of deleveraging our dividends and ongoing investment for growth. Now, talking to the next slide, which is really around our leverage and liquidity profile, it's important to highlight, as we said earlier on, that we have been really focused around balance sheet management, and you can see that we've seen a consolidated net debt to EBITDA improving to 0.3 times now from 0.7 times same period last year. This reflects strong recovery in EBITDA, improved cash generation and disciplined balance sheet management, as I indicated.
At the holding company level, our HoldCo leverage is now at 1.3 times, which is below our guided 1.5 times that we've guided to the market. Even our group leverage is way below our covenant limits. In terms of currency mix, our non-ZAR debt at HoldCo level stood at approximately 16%, once again, which is well below our medium term threshold of 40% for the foreign currency denominated borrowings. Cash upstreaming, as I indicated, ZAR 17.4 billion as well supported the improved leverage at HoldCo, but also our liquidity headroom, which now increased to ZAR 43 billion with closing cash balances of ZAR 20 billion for the year.
Turning to the right-hand side of the slide, the maturity profile of our debt at HoldCo is now well staggered over the next years, helping us to mitigate the refinancing risk. Our immediate focus here is also continue to refinance the maturing, the maturities that are coming through in 2026. We manage our debt profile very proactively and continue to benefit strong access to and support from the debt markets. Really thank you to some of our lenders for the partnerships that we've had, over the years. We are very comfortable with where we are from a balance sheet perspective.
Lastly, before I hand over to Ralph, I think it is important to just highlight, in terms of where we are following our Ambition 2025 and as we move into 2030, which Ralph will take you through. I think to summarize, we're really encouraged to see the pleasing set of results. Firstly, for 2025, we've delivered sustained momentum broadly across all the elements of our key financial KPIs and earnings, very good quality earnings, as well as attractive free cash flow generation and a healthy financial profile from a balance sheet perspective. We've had a framework that always aimed at looking at service revenue above inflation, so growing our in real terms.
What we had from a medium-term guidance perspective was growth in high teens with improved margins and earnings and a disciplined capital allocation approach, really focusing on attracting free cash flows, driving attractive free cash flows as well as reduced leverage. I think as you can see these numbers here, suffice to say that our service revenue growth has grown at almost 17%, which over the years is above our blended average of about 14%. Had we not done all the EEP initiatives that we've done, given the shocks that we've had, we probably would not have been able to be as resilient as we could have been as a business. We have seen an improvement in our returns to shareholders with ROE progression of about 8.6 percentage points and an average CapEx intensity of 17.6% overall over the five years. With that, I will hand over to Ralph.
Tsholofelo Molefe, thanks very much. I trust that, Tsholofelo Molefe's given you a flavor of what's detailed in our SENS and our annual financial statements in terms of the results. I think, you will agree that, overall the results delivered were quite pleasing. Before we take Q&A, two more sections, one on strategy as we move towards 2030, and then, priorities and outlook. We set out a strategy, at the back end of 2019 going to 2020, looking at the structural growth opportunities that we saw, having looked and assessed where is the continent in terms of digital adoption, where is the African continent in terms of financial inclusion. That structural growth thesis has been the underpin for Ambition 2025.
As you see on the charts, some metrics that show you the kind of growth that we delivered. Subscribers, we're now at over 300. We started off, if we use rebase to the markets that we've exited some markets in the period, you know, order of magnitude 10 million per year subscribers coming into the base. Active data subscribers more or less 12 million actives, you know, net additions coming in who are regularly using data. We've seen, as I mentioned, good growth in terms of fintech, just shy of 70 million monthly active users there. Tsola's spoken about EEP, the progress that we've made, so we had two sets of EEP. We talk internally that, you know, expenses are like nails, they need trimming from time to time.
I anticipate that we'll have ongoing expense initiative programs, but during the period, quite pleased with the progress that we've made. As Tsola's mentioned, the return progression has been pleasing. Our asset realization program I mentioned earlier, we didn't execute on IHS for very good reasons, you know, post their listing, and we've had a strategic pivot to bring back these towers. At the time we set out our strategy, some of you will remember that, the valuation of IHS then was about 30 odd billion rand, you know from at least our share of that value was ZAR 30 billion at that time. Obviously, with the market conditions and revision of strategy, we did not execute that.
Nigeria, further sell down in Nigeria. Market conditions were not appropriate, 2023, 2024, and even 2025. We also assessed the situation with the changes in the tax code in Nigeria and decided that we wouldn't progress with a further sell down, certainly not at this stage. We feel that's the right strategy, and some of you have seen the Nigerian share price rerate. I think probably the biggest job done is really the job to materially improve the quality of the balance sheets. We used to have 48% of the debt was hard currency. Almost 50% of our debt was hard currency, and we've brought it down to 16%, as well as the HoldCo leverage well below.
Broadly, if you look at our strategic intent in terms of 2025, we can say, when you look at it in the rounds, we've been able to deliver what we promised to our shareholders. This year, as we exit 2025, you can see the quality of the results and the commercial execution therein. We still think that the themes of structural data and fintech inclusion underpin the future of MTN and the markets we operate in over the next five years. We started just at the end of COVID, tracking these cohorts of data. What's data traffic? 'Cause it's giving us a sense of demand. What's happening with fintech transaction volumes?
'Cause it's also telling us a story about how customers are engaging with our services and new customers coming onto our platforms. In 2019, 282 petabytes in the network. It's now 2,234, almost an eigh times increase, showing you that there is structural demand and growth across our markets. Similar average transaction volumes per quarter, 1.3 billion, now it's just under six, so that's like four and a half times. The thesis that says there is growth opportunities, the kind of growth that we delivered last year, the data showing us that remains on track.
The group board spent quite a considerable amount of time last year doing a comprehensive review of the strategy, and looking forward to the next five years to say, how should we think about the strategy. I think a couple of key call-outs here. Firstly, the board endorsed the strategy as being the right one, and that the focus for us was to integrate certain pivots that we were seeing, around customer behavior, use of technology, where is AI going, and related. That the strategy remained the right one and we needed to focus on executing with those pivots. They supported the point that there is an enduring investment case out there around digital and financial inclusion, and that we want to focus all our resources on the African continent.
We are calling out a further simplification of the strategy and saying we're looking at it from the three platforms. We're looking at connectivity across all our markets, as a platform, as we are with fintech, and now increasingly looking also at digital infrastructure. We'll be allocating capital across those business in line with the returns and the growth prospects that we'll see going forward. As I said, we are seeing our customers are, you know, increasingly wanting an amplified experience. You'll see that even in our CapEx, it'll evolve where the share of CapEx in that 15%-18% will be more IT than network, to reflect the investment in a much stronger customer experience.
As I mentioned, technologies such as AI are going to be with us, you know, over the next three to five years as well. That we need to have an operating model that enables us to capture these structural growth opportunities and deliver value. We're not doing it for the sake of doing it. We obviously want to deliver value for our stakeholders. We are framing, as I said, under the three pillars, but importantly, the purpose of the company remains the same. We're not changing anything there. Our purpose is really to deliver leading digital solutions for Africa's progress. We want to situate our own strategy into the progress of the nation-states that we operate in. We think that that's a resilient and a sustainable approach on how to take forward our own strategy.
We're talking about platforms of choice for consumers, for homes and businesses. Under each of those platforms, we're calling out some very specific strategic priorities, and where we are going to be deploying capital to invest. Scaling data for us is not just providing the raw data, but building the digital services that sit on top of connectivity. You know, currently, our customers are doing about just over 12 GB, you know, data usage per month. Our customers are $2-$3 average revenue per user. You go to India, same $2-$3, 30 GB. Why? Because there are services being offered that enable the customers not only to pay for the data, but the services that sit. Embedded in scale data is also our aspirations for digital services.
Accelerating home, we think there is a significant opportunity in home over the next five years. A lot of the investment the last 3 decades has been about mobility. Over time, we think that homes is where a predominant amount of the workload. COVID was a bit of a wake-up call for all of us about networks and investments and the ability for our customers to be connected to the Internet. We see a material home opportunity of 20-30 million homes connected by MTN using different technologies, fixed wireless access, where we have the spectrum and the network capacity and where we see the near-term opportunity to be deploying FTTH. We are taking a technology agnostic approach to connecting homes. The right technology that will generate the right economics is the technology.
We're not particularly precious about a specific technology. It's the one that will give the customer the right experience, and we are able to be able to monetize. We're also calling out enterprises for the next three to five years. The enterprise opportunity in South Africa is being meaningfully harvested. We still think there's some growth there. On the rest of the continent, we still believe we are at the right at the beginning. We're not talking about the multinationals and large enterprises, but the small medium enterprises who we can bring to them technology that enables them to be able to meet their own aspirations.
Think of, you know, the ladies in the market when you travel to Ghana or Nigeria, selling tomatoes or clothes, whatever it may be, that gives them a sense of living. Technology on the phone should be a real enabler. That's a big opportunity that we want to tap into. Fintech, the strategy being clear, there is not something completely new. Fintech is really about executing the priorities that we've set around, about growing and expanding the ecosystem and accelerating the advanced services. On digital infrastructure, beyond fiber, we're calling out data centers. Our approach will be different. It will be one that's fit for purpose. It's not what you're seeing in the developed North or in China.
We think that with workloads that are coming out of our networks and our consumers and businesses that we operate, we need to be positioning ourselves, you know, quite thoughtfully around how we can, you know, deploy capital. We put unlocked tower value because the IHS Towers transaction is still subject to the various approvals. If we, you know, get those approvals, it will fit in as that third box under digital infrastructure. All of these platforms really require across them, you know, three key drivers. Customer experience, we think today it's important to have a great network and great technologies, but the customer must experience your service as leading. We're talking about leading customer experience. We will leverage AI for growth.
AI will evolve as electricity evolved after Michael Faraday, you know, invented electricity. No one knew all the use cases. Our use cases will come, and we want to be positioned in a way that AI is enabling us to leapfrog like mobile was a leapfrog for Africa from fixed lines. There is a potential here for a leapfrogging if we're smart and allocate our capital judiciously and smartly to the opportunities that come. Creating Shared Value. If you operate in Africa, you must be linked in deeply with the nation-states that you operate in. We think that the Shared Value framework is the one that will enable us to sustain and maintain our positions as being a partner of progress for all the nation-states that we operate in. We're streamlining next to the strategy, the capital allocation framework.
I've just got four pillars now. One which is really around the organic growth. We'll continue to invest sufficiently to have leading network and IT positions. Order of magnitude, think 15%-18% of, you know, CapEx to sales is broadly it's not a target, but just think of it as the way that we think about, you know, sustaining an investment. The healthy financial profile, we want, you know, strong balance sheets. Strong balance sheets enable us to withstand shocks, but also to create take advantage of opportunities as and when they come.
We spoke to the shareholder remuneration framework, you know, a framework going forward framed on equity free cash flow, 40%-60% combination of cash dividends and buybacks done opportunistically, and we've been clear about the amount we spend on buybacks to the maximum over the next three years. We do think value creative inorganic opportunities will remain our capital allocation framework. In the way we have assessed the IHS opportunity, it fits into that fourth bucket. It has to be value creative, and it adds to a meaningful expansion of the investment case. If you are to judge it, you need to judge it under that pillar four. This is the simplified capital allocation framework that we'll use to discipline ourselves in how we deploy capital across the businesses.
We think the investment case substantially, you know, remains the same, which is there are structural growth opportunities across our markets. We, as MTN, uniquely positioned, with the scale that we have, the assets that we have, and Tsholofelo Molefe took you through the financial framework for generating value, and we're adding to it, this compelling shareholder remuneration framework, you know, to thank the shareholders, you know, for deploying capital. We think that becomes a really important part of our financial framework. As I said, Creating Shared Value remains the underpin of how we lock ourselves in with the nation states that we operate in. We will have an opportunity, I think in or around the tenth of June, we're having a capital markets day. It'll be held here.
I think you should anticipate the invites where we will delve into all of these areas in a lot more details and give you the confidence we have about our ability to execute the strategy and deliver value, you know, over the next three to five years. Just a few points on outlook and priorities, and just starting with the outlook. We had a very benign macro relatively last year, but I think as we started this year, there is obviously a lot of global uncertainties. There's conflict in the Middle East, the European conflict in Ukraine and Russia is ongoing. There are conflicts on the African continent, as we speak today, whether it's in Sudan or other areas. We're alive to these macro conditions and how we need to manage and operate in them.
More recently, obviously, we've seen quite a lot of volatility around oil prices as well as you know all the issues that you are all familiar with with regards to what are the second-order effects of some of the conflict in the Middle East and energy prices in particular. We also remain focused on managing kind of an evolving regulatory environment. We operate in multiple countries. The regulatory context is not the same across all of the markets, so we have to you know remain you know nimble across the evolving in terms of regulatory context. With such a macro backdrop, how are we thinking about the year ahead? I'd like to make five key call-outs.
The first is maintaining resilience in this global macro. What does this specifically mean for us at MTN? The balance sheet, ensuring balance sheet strength and resilience. The choices we make about capital allocation expenditure, we'll always keep an eye on how do we remain resilient with the balance sheet. Supply chains. Supply chains, you know, we understand, as this big build-out of AI, chipsets are, you know, are in short supply or getting more expensive. We are spending a, you know, time thinking about the supply chain, which components of technology are critical, and what the choices and the trade-offs we need to make in terms of meeting our supply chain needs within the context of a finite investment that we can afford. As I said, we'll continue to look at the expenditure.
Maintaining the resilience that we've shown over time during this period will be key. The second is sustaining the commercial momentum across our markets that we've seen. As Sulu said, you know, sometimes we have internal markets that we say close monitoring, we need to improve. A market like Zambia jumped out of close monitoring. We're seeing Côte d'Ivoire showing good gains. Cameroon is going to. We want all our markets to be contributing to the overall results. There are several countries outside of Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana, and those have to, you know, deliver results in line with group expectations. We're calling out to sustaining. South Africa, as I mentioned, big priority around the SA prepaid. It's 52% of service revenue.
We have to get that into growth to be within our guidance range for service revenue and EBITDA margins. That remains focused. Fintech, it's a story of execution against commercial and strategic objectives. We're not debating strategy. We are focused on the execution side. Then finally, completing the IHS transaction. That is obviously subject to shareholder approvals and getting through all the regulatory approvals. We've commenced engagements around some of the regulatory approvals to sound out and engage with the third-party customers of IHS. Obviously the formal engagements with authorities, both regulatory and shareholders, and we anticipate that general meeting will probably be called by IHS in May to get through the shareholder vote.
We had also anticipated that today we'll be sharing with you the pro forma effects of our results and IHS. I think IHS just released results now. Once we have their results, soon as practically possible, we will share those pro forma effects. We won't wait until Q1 trading update. As soon as we've done the work, you know, kind of out of cycle, we'll be able to share what those pro forma effects. As we said, we believe that the deal is value creative, you know, also at earnings and cash flow level, and we remain convinced of that. We must put that in a form that you can all consume and be equally convinced as we are that this is a deal that, you know, fits into Ambition 2030 and will ultimately deliver value. Finally, medium term guidance.
As I mentioned, much of it remains the same. We didn't want to change too many things, so you can see there that the guidance is largely the same. What have we changed? Returns ROE now to return on capital employed. We feel that that is a better measure. Even our LTI going forward will have an ROCE expansion measure that you'll see. This you'll see in due course. That's ensuring that what we say to you and as an executive team, that we have, you know, meaningful amounts of the LTIs focused on delivering returns and ensuring the returns above the cost of capital. We are also focusing on net debt to EBITDA now, just again to simplify. Even with the IHS Towers transaction, remember that the debt is not of the HoldCo.
It will be in a subsidiary once we conclude. That's actually a more meaningful measure of where we'll be, and we're calling out that we want to be less than 1x. We are at 0.3x at the moment, but we believe that given our profile, and the markets we operate in, we want to be judicious and remain below the 1x for leverage. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for spending almost, just over an hour listening from Sulu and I. I think it was a little bit more extended because we wanted to talk about strategy. I'll call on to Thato on stage and Sulu, and we're happy to take your questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ralph. Thanks very much, Sulu, for a comprehensive coverage of our results and the strategy transition. We'll probably do Q&A for 30 minutes, just to make sure that we get you to the refreshments. Of course, we will engage with you over the next couple of weeks, so we've got some time to discuss in more detail. Let's start with the Q&A. I think if we start in the room. Please just wait for the mic to come through, and we'll start with John. Okay.
Thank you. Martin Zungu from TechCentral. Ralph, you touched lightly on the effect of the chip shortage on supply chains. I think there are two aspects to it. The first is that in South Africa, you are subsidizing devices at the low-cost end. Are you absorbing those costs, or how else are you responding? In terms of networking equipment and how far your CapEx will go in the coming year, how are you managing that risk?
Yeah. On the devices and 5G, Freddy's in the room. Let him answer. Let him sing for his supper. If you can bring a mic in front of Freddy and Dinara here. Let them answer. Now, look, I mean, it's early days at the moment, and we have a CapEx, an annual CapEx envelope that's approved by the board. What we normally do is we allow the Opcos to, before Q1, to spend 70%. The other 30 we hold back so that we want to assess what is happening. What we're saying to our teams is, yes, we are looking at, in fact, chipsets are just one category that we're looking at.
You know, there's a few SIM cards or another category where the prices have gone up quite a bit over the last, you know, couple of months. I mean, basically, in the near term, we're saying let's make the choices within an envelope. There's an envelope of affordability, and we are asking our teams, "Make choices within that, prioritize." It's something that we are looking at now. It's not only specific to MTN. It's a global issue. It's a real global issue. I don't know whether Charles is not here. Amit is sitting at the back there. He's super technical, so we should try and get a mic to Amit. Amit, I see you're sitting at the back there. Give us a really intelligent answer on this question.
You know, I think, thanks, Ralph. In terms of the chipsets, we're not seeing a drastic shortage, but we're seeing the price of compute going up significantly, largely due to the better returns on the AI chipsets, so we see a constraint. The way our capital allocation works is we release early the previous year. 25% of our total CapEx is made available in October for the following year.
Normally we order long lead items in advance. Servers are one of those long lead items because normally it's taking six to eight weeks 'cause they're kind of built for our specific needs, and we've done that already at the end of last year. Now it's just delta, which we're not seeing as an issue. Delivery is not an issue, it's just the price has gone up. As Ralph said, we are looking at prioritization of what's key and what's non-key, and obviously allocating accordingly.
Freddy?
Yeah. Do I sit or do I stand?
However you're more comfortable.
Generally, I'm not sure what exact handsets you were referring to, but in the market itself, depending on the price of the handsets, you'll follow what the market does in terms of do we subsidize, do we push specific handsets in the market. We've got a number of programs as well with some vendors, and the structure of the handset might work differently with some, especially the lower-end handsets. These are the handsets I think we launched sometime this year, the low-end 5G handset, where we have a partner involved that jointly takes it.
Then we also do some off-balance sheet financing for our handsets as well. Generally, we see what happens in the market. What is the demand in the market? Do we want to push 4G or 5G handsets in? We haven't seen a substantial increase in the handset pricing yet. I think as Amit said, we just anticipate that there could be a shortage, so we're planning for whatever we would need to do. Thanks.
Thanks, Freddy. Can we get a mic to.
Jono Bradley from Absa. Firstly, congrats on a great set of results. Three questions from me, please. Just on the FinTech minority stake sale to Mastercard, have the numbers sort of changed? I know the valuation, I think, at the time was around $5.2 billion, up to $200 million from Mastercard. Has there been any change in that? And are you still looking to sort of sell further minority stakes once this deal closes? The second question, just on sort of comments around the East Africa expansion, that I saw in sort of a few headlines.
Could you maybe just give some color on how that could look? You know, what sort of opportunities you would be looking for? You know, is that GSM or FinTech? Just lastly, on the SA business, I think you flagged a slowdown in XtraTime sales. Just what is the sort of penetration level of XtraTime in SA, and what's the sort of level that you'd be looking for?
Yeah. On that third question, Freddy, you'll pick it up. Let me pick up the first two. Yeah. Absolutely, on the FinTech side, nothing has changed. We're still working with Mastercard toward the $200 million. We've been focusing on getting the structural separations out. They're complex, huh? Let's be clear, because you are carving out the financials, you've gotta go through to shareholders, you've gotta create a structure that's tax efficient. It's gotta go through all the regulators. I'm glad to say that in Ghana that's done. You know, thanks to the teams, the authorities, and the stakeholders who enabled us to do that. Uganda, we've far progressed. We're now in the regulatory phases. Nigeria, there will be a...
At the AGM, a structure being proposed for the full carve-out of what is the FinTech business there, or more PSP-wide DFS. That's coming in, it goes to the shareholder in our shareholder vote in the April AGM. Once we've done these three, which are probably the most complex, we should run through much more quickly. No change in valuation, no change in the 200. We've made, Mastercard are aware of the processes that we're going, and that's taking a bit more time. They're, you know, they've been very supportive and actually, I think they reached out to Serigne Dioum a few weeks ago to say, "How do we help with all the regulatory approvals?" Nothing has changed there. On East Africa, I think, you're reading too much, Jono Bradley, of the press.
What we basically said to the press was that over time, I mean, that's three to five years out, we'll look at the portfolio. The portfolio is quite heavily weighted in West Africa. Actually, if you take a five to 10-year view, and you're wanting to find another 50-100 million customers, you're gonna have to be quite mature in East Africa. That's not today, yeah? This is a five to 10-year view. We don't have any plans.
I mean, on the M&A side, you know, the IHS transaction is just gonna consume us, you know, for the next two to three years. When you read those articles, read them with a level of healthy skepticism about what can be executed. This is a discussion with a journalist about what life could look like in a decade's time. In a decade's time, you know, maybe we do want a stronger East African footprint. We just don't have the capacity or the capital to pursue it right now. Frederic Schepens?
I thought perhaps just give you a bit of a broader view. On prepaid, we're really looking at prepaid from a number of vantage points. The one is more sort of the portfolio itself, so this we talk to data yield, data pricing, bundles, this type of thing, the customer journey. Then, as you said, we were looking at what we call resetting of our XtraTime, and then we're looking at productivity of the channel itself, how we manage this. On all three of these, we believe we're doing quite well. Just on XtraTime specifically, you referred to penetration. We use a number of KPIs to sort of look at the health of the base itself. One is penetration, and this was sitting beyond, I think, 40% at this stage.
We've been able to bring it down to an acceptable level that we feel we're ready to start pushing XtraTime again. Some of the metrics that we look within XtraTime would relate to the time of the repayment of the XtraTime, so percentage of the advance you give, how long does it take to be repaid. We've seen some huge positive movement on this also. On XtraTime, I think we're at the stage or very close to the stage to really start pushing on XtraTime again.
Of course, the actual challenge is not where does your metrics sit, but who do you identify and how much do you advance. This is where the data analytics and the CVM campaign comes in far more. As Ralph had said, we probably see a bit of challenge this quarter, maybe into next quarter, and then we will start seeing a substantial ramp up. Thanks.
Thanks, Freddy. Let's take one more in the room before we go to the webcast. Dania? Dania? Dania Amo? It's Louise.
Hi, everyone. It's Louise Cole from Investec. I have a few questions. On your returns on capital employed guidance, can you maybe comment on the thinking around the specific targets? I guess, what's the current base to work from? If you can comment market by market, which markets are currently generating returns below WACC? I assume this is South Africa. For these markets, can we assume that your CapEx intensity will be lower than at the other opcos? I mean, how geared is this, you know, returns profile, metric, to CapEx intensity? For any potential acquisitions, will you only be considering targets within this ROIC range?
The other maybe tail-top and tail on that is the data centers. You've mentioned that, you've got a co-investment structure with potential partners. How significant could this investment be? Will this be in your current CapEx budget, and how will this be funded, debt versus equity, if significant? I guess I have to ask a final question on SA's. Prepaid regulatory side of things, I mean, how are you positioning for, you know, the end users, subscriber service charter and data expiry rules? Thanks.
Yeah, Thato Motlanthe, can we take good luck? Wishing you good luck.
Yeah.
Louise, you're coming to the breakfast tomorrow, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. I think we'll pick up on the big ones, and what I don't pick up, let's deal with them tomorrow. Let's talk about return on capital employed. Look, I mean, we're a capital-intensive business. I'll allow Tsholo to join here. I mean, we're currently on return on capital employed, it's kind of mid-high 20s%. Exit point for 2025. We're calling out high 20s%, early 30s%. We're really at that midpoint, kind of the high 20s%, and we'll have a range. It's really to reflect that it's not just equity that we need to return to deliver a return on. It needs to be also on our total asset base. You could took.
You could take return on invested capital. We did a lot of work to come up here, and I'll ask Tsholo to join. You know, return on invested capital, single country operator, makes sense. Simplest. We're in multiple jurisdiction, and you wouldn't realistically be able to hand on heart say, "I will deliver this," because of the complexities there. To your big questions, it's already about 25%-26% as of end of last year, and we're calling out high 20s-30s as our target. We want to improve that profile going forward is the first. Tsholo, I don't know if you want to add on that one.
Yeah. I mean, I think Ralph has covered. I mean, we considered a number of factors and exactly one of them was also we're in a multi-jurisdictional environment, very volatile environment as well. That was the factor. We considered whether we should use return on invested capital. We ended with ROCE based on the work that we've done as well in terms of global practice. We believe that it does give us a view of, you know, a capital-intensive business still growing, but obviously needing to show reasonable returns over time. That, that's what it gives us. Yeah. I think maybe on your second question, I think safe to say most of our markets are generating returns above weighted average cost of capital. There's probably, you know, one or two small markets that are not in addition to South Africa. Yeah.
Right.
I think on the, I don't know if you wanna touch the data center one.
Yeah, let me start with South African.
Sure.
You can take the data center one, Tsholo.
Yeah. I mean, just to finish off your question, I mean, on the data center one, obviously we've always said that when we go into this space, we will be looking to partner.
Okay.
Going in with, obviously partnerships, looking at equity capital, because it's not something that we would be able to absorb on our balance sheet.
Yeah.
That's how we are thinking about it, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you know, on South Africa, I mean, it's below the cost of capital. That's clear. That's why, you know, the job that Ferdi, Dineo, and Yolanda, the broader team have is the top line, which is, you know, you know, continue to grow, pre, post-paid enterprise. Let's get prepaid into growth, and I think that deals with the. There's quite a lot of work to be done, huh? Also on, let's say leases. You know, ATC leases, you know, they're quite expensive, more expensive than IHS actually. So there's work to be done there. And on the balance sheet end, to get that return above as well. South Africa's got quite a bit of a debt stack that's quite historic.
The question of what do you repatriate to Group in terms of dividend versus interest payments, that's the work the team also have to do. It's both top line and bottom line that needs work over the next two to three years. That's why when we came out in August last year, we said this is a two to three -year fix to get returns above the cost of capital. You see we're putting, you know, meaningful CapEx in, but, you know, the number is more ZAR 7 billion, not 10+ billion. It's unaffordable until we can get that return above the cost.
Thanks, Ralph. As you say, Louise, we might catch up on the other ones tomorrow.
We'll catch up tomorrow.
Let me just go onto the webcast. Let me just ask three slightly different questions. The first one, on Iran, can you please give us an update on if the network is up and running? Who is the CEO, and what happens to investment in Iran, in Irancell if the war ends or escalates or the regime changes, we'll just keep living.
Well, that's a lot of tasks. I mean, I think to that question, maybe just a couple of factual points. So we have a minority stake in Iran, 49%. If you double-click on that and look at this year's financials, our net assets, it's 4% of net assets, a small part of the business. On earnings, adjusted HEPS, it's about 7%. We have about ZAR 2 billion of outstanding loans and dividends that have been rolled up. Its financial contribution to the group is actually quite small. That's the first point. The second point, in line with the fact that, you know, we don't control it, we're a minority, is that the appointment of a CEO is made by the majority shareholders there.
The normal sequence is we get consulted around the change of CEO. Very early in January, that didn't happen. We did protest that, you've changed the CEO, we know you're in control, but historically, you've asked us, 'cause we have sanctions and other, you know, processes that we want to check. You know, we weren't happy about all of that and, you know, we did formally protest. As we speak today, we don't have any expats and secondees in Iran. In fact, we haven't had since the beginning of January. They're all in South Africa and in Lebanon, three of them. There's like zero.
The network is up or not, we don't know because we don't operate there and we don't have a way of knowing. We're not participating in board activities for some time there. That's the context. In an environment where we could exit, as you know, there are U.S. and other sanctions. Iran is kind of ring-fenced out of SWIFT and all the payments are not worked since May 2018. You can't put money in, you can't take money out in compliance with sanctions, which is our priority number one. In an environment where we could exit, we will exit. I think you saw what happened in Syria. The sanctions got lifted and now we're busy finalizing a settlement agreement.
It's not a lot of money, but we'll now be able to actually exit Syria 'cause we had to abandon. Abandoning legally is not very helpful because you're still the owners of the shares. I, you know, we often hear people say, "Just abandon." Yeah, you can abandon in a way that then causes you more harm than you had anticipated. It's a very complicated and tricky situation, trying to manage it best we can.
Thanks, Ralph. Another couple of questions. Please advise what the outcome of the Cell C wholesale pricing review was in December 2025. The second question, please give guidance on the Opcos whose margins have the highest exposure to rising global oil prices.
Rising. Okay. Freddy? While Freddy is getting the mic, yeah, look, I mean, the markets that have diesel pass through will be the ones most exposed to rising global prices. Wherever you have a pass-through, I think we have pass-throughs in Ghana and Nigeria. Those are the ones where, you know, the tower company just passes through what they are picking up basically at the pump. Those will be the two large markets. Importantly, for quarter one, it would be based on the exit of last year. If there was going to be an impact, let's say, in Nigeria, you'd only pick it up in quarter two. The sequencing of the quarters and how those contracts are designed is also important.
For now, Nigeria's Q1, even where oil is right now, shouldn't be. I think with Nigeria, the other impact is the Dangote Refinery is picking up steam. Rather than simply just watching Nigeria, the global Brent and WTI prices, if you want to look at all of those, look at the diesel pump price in Nigeria that's coming out of Dangote Refinery. What they've done now is they've taken out a lot of export licenses in Nigeria to mitigate that impact to try and bring more of local refining capacity into the market. Freddy?
In terms of this side.
Yeah. Cell C.
Yeah. In terms of the diesel in SA, in South Africa, we do the power as a service ourselves, so we will pick up any exposure on the diesel side. We've been engaging broader government around us as well. We do have two refineries that I think are still up and running. In the margin that we gave you, we built in some concerns around diesel already. We do have a bit of a margin in terms of that. We anticipated increases in diesel prices.
On Cell C, what we were able to negotiate was an above inflation increase on the pricing. The contract also allows us to discuss other issues with them. We are still in discussions with them around technology and volumes and pricing as well. That's ongoing at the moment. The one at the end of last year that was concluded gave us above inflation increase on the price.
Let me just check if there's hands in the room. Quite a few. Yeah.
Hi. It's Myron from Metals Industries. Just first a comment on MTN. I mean, if you just take a step back and look at you guys for the last five, six years, right? You made it a much better quality company, so well done on that. I mean, whether it's the expense efficiency program, whether it's the hard currency ratio, debt ratios, you know, you've managed to convince the regulators for price ups when currencies fall out of bed, and also getting IHS back in the fold. I mean, that's a 180-degree pivot, but it's a great deal from where Metals Industries sit. So thank you for that, and well done to you and the team for that. That's just a comment first.
The second bit is, you know, as a shareholder, we are greedy people. You know, you've shown me that your equity free cash flow, you're gonna give us 40%-60% of that, right? Now, equity free cash flow after giving minority dividends out includes everything you have to pay. You know, CapEx, interest, tax, cost. There's nothing left to pay, so why only 40%, Ralph? I mean, is it because, you know, you plan on. You're assuming the IHS deal happens and therefore you will de-gear with that, or is it going to somebody's pocket?
There are no pockets other to go to other than at shareholders, to be honest. I mean, I think Tsholo expresses it best. I mean, obviously where we are now, we also have to anticipate, you know, the IHS coming into the fold. So the way we planned and thought through about this shareholder remuneration, we had to kind of run ahead and see what that would do. Tsholo, I don't know if you wanna add to that.
Yeah. I did anticipate that question, by the way. I think the way you should look at it, you know, it's a cash dividend, 40% minimum. As we said, you know, we will consider, you know, a share buyback based on predetermined criteria, which would be, you know, the additional 20%. If we don't need to do a buyback, there will be additional, you know, returns to shareholders or, you know, acceleration of the debt. I think that's how you should look at it. Of course, you know, from a group perspective, there are strategic investments that we probably need to think about, you know, at group level, including the, as Ralph says, the debt repayment. Those are the things I think you must think about. Yeah, 50%-40% maximum.
Thanks, Tsholo. I think I saw a couple of hands. Let's start with Nadeem.
Hi. Nadeem Mohamed from Standard Bank Securities. Just two questions from my side, pretty short ones. Seeing that you have, if I look at your three platform strategy, you seem to have a nascent opportunity in fintech and digital infrastructure. Now that your balance sheet is de-geared, would you look to do more acquisitions or, you know, to bolt on to the different ecosystems and infrastructures that you have in Africa, just to accelerate the growth in those areas? Secondly, just a question on SA. I noticed that the medium term guidance is still 35%-37% for EBITDA margins. That seems to be quite a long way off from where we are in Q4. Could you give us any color on how you plan to get there? Thank you.
Yeah, just, I'll try and respond quickly. I think the three platform strategy enables us to do exactly what you said, which is you can, you know, look at an opportunity on a platform by platform basis. You don't have to take the connectivity business to opportunity Y, if the fintech is compelling enough itself. So it gives us the flexibility to maneuver and say, "In this market, this is the best way to arrange ourselves." So we will look at that over time. Just on a M&A basis, you know, we got IHS, so that's gonna consume a lot of time and capital. All other opportunities that come along the way would need to be, you know, meaningful and value creative, whether it's fintech, digital infra, or on connectivity.
On SA, I mean, our point is, first of all, meet and beat the guidance before you change them. The Q4 deceleration, as we said, you know, we took a bit of, you know, painful medicine, i.e. capped the airtime advance that, you know, is being taken into the market. That's gonna be, you know, actually quite painful. Secondly, a bit of sales and distribution investment that's eating away at the margin, and that's why we said, there's a couple of quarters to come before the impacts will come through. We did anticipate the question that says look at Q4, but Q4 has got some idiosyncrasies there.
As I said, that's where the painful medicine was taken on airtime advance, as well as investment in distribution. You're not going to see that margin there in Q1 at the level we want it to be, and I think at the back end of Q2, maybe certainly by Q3, if I look at the plans that Ferdi and team have. SA, it will be tough for a couple more quarters, to be clear. Thank you, Ralph. I think there was another hand over there.
Admar, Terra Partners. Just two questions. Can you give an update on the DOJ issue? As well as there's been reports of complaints by RURA that MTN is operating illegally in the RURA, I think probably from the Rwanda network. What would be the implications? Because they've said they've taken that to international whatever, arbitration and stuff. Do we expect a fine? What are normally how those issues are resolved? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Admar, for your questions. Let me respond to them. DoJ investigation is ongoing, and our voluntary cooperation is ongoing. We have been cooperating with them for information requests. Our lawyers meet with them in the United States, that is ongoing. There's no material development to share, otherwise we'd have put it in the SENS, to be clear. Yes, we are aware of the issues in Rwanda. As you're probably aware, there is a protocol between Rwanda and the DRC for both countries around signal spillage that at the border a signal can only travel so far. It works both ways, and our understanding is that in Rwanda, RURA, the authorities, did write in November of last year to the DRC authorities to say, "Can we meet to discuss signal spillage?" You know, MTN Group don't operate in the DRC, so our understanding is that those conversations are happening.
Thanks, Ralph. Let me just take the last two questions online. Since your early announcement on IHS, how comfortable are you about the timeline of the deal?
Yeah, I mean, the timeline is difficult to determine precisely because you've gotta go through regulatory approvals, and you can't force function these. We anticipate that this should be from announcement order of magnitude about six months. Our calculation six to seven months is the expected time to clear everything, but obviously that's not a precise timeline, but that's the timeline we're working towards.
Maybe just the last question. Will you still be paying semi-annual dividends? If yes, will the H-one payout be roughly similar to H-two?
It's an annual dividend. It's not, there's no semi-annual.
All right.
That's why we said annual distribution.
All right, let's close it then. Again, apologies in advance. We did have a lot to say in terms of the strategy and the evolution to Ambition 2030. Maybe, Ralph, final words.
Yeah, just two final words. You know, three. I mean, firstly, to thank all of you for paying attention in what was a bit of a long presentation, but as Thato's mentioned, we had the strategy evolution to talk through as well. Secondly, some of the questions that we may have not answered, either writing to our IR desk, you know, or we will pick up these questions in roadshows. Thula and I will be on roadshows with Thato here in SA, the UK, and the US over the next two weeks or so. We look forward to those engagements in the various jurisdictions. The final point is, it's with some sadness and almost tears in my eyes to say that this is Thato's last results presentation.
Thato's been a stalwart of investor communication for the last seven years. He's decided to move, let's just say offshore. I'm not so sure it's the most interesting place to go. When he did tell us that he was leaving, I was almost in tears to say, you know, "What have we done wrong?" We felt like the jilted, you know. Thula and I said, you know, "What have we done wrong?" Anyway, we're wishing him well in his new endeavors. He starts there first of April. That also gives an opportunity to welcome Roy Mutoni, who will be joining us first of April. Some in the investment community you know of him. He'll be joining us first of April.
You'll see a much more elderly and more handsome version to Thato in time to come. I wanted to use this opportunity to express my gratitude on behalf of MTN, as and I'm sure the investment community, on the fantastic work that Thato has done for us the last seven years. Well done, Thato. Thank you so much. For those who are staying, please join us for drinks and refreshments outside. Thank you.
Thank you.