Good day, everybody, and thank you for joining us to discuss the MTN Group trading update for the three months ended March 2026. My name is Roy Mutooni. I'm Head of Group Investor Relations for MTN. On the call with me is Ralph Mupita, our Group President and CEO, and Tsholofelo Molefe, our Group CFO. Our trading update was published this morning on the JSE and is posted on our website on the Investor Relations page. We also released the pro forma financial information for FY 2025 related to the IHS transaction that remains in progress. You would also have seen the Q1 releases from our listed OpCos over the past few weeks, and I trust that you are able to join their respective investor calls. The running agenda for the call will be as usual. Ralph will start with an overview of the operational performance.
He will be followed by Tsholo with a review of our financial performance. Ralph will come back to wrap up with key focus areas and the outlook. We will move into Q&A. I encourage you to use the webcast platform to send through your questions, which I will then read out at the end. A reminder that the call is scheduled for about an hour. I'd like to hand over to Ralph Mupita.
Thank you, Roy. A very good afternoon or morning to you all, depending on your location. Let's get straight to the results delivered in the period. In Q1 2026, the group delivered a strong start to our Ambition 2030 strategy against an uncertain global geopolitical environment, but fairly benign macroeconomic backdrop in key markets. The group reported both service revenue growth, EBITDA margin expansion, and a strengthened balance sheet underpinned by execution of our commercial and strategic priorities and disciplined capital allocation. We deployed CapEx of ZAR 9.6 billion over this quarter. Before we get into the details, let me outline the six key messages of our performance in the period. The first point is that we are pleased with the sustained commercial momentum delivered in the quarter.
This was led by our businesses in Nigeria, Ghana, as well as Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon in particular. Performance in markets such as Zambia was also very encouraging. The second highlight is that as a group, we continue to see pleasing growth in our data and fintech businesses, which showed 35.4% and 20% revenue growth respectively. Underlying these revenue trends, data traffic was up 20.2% and value of fintech transactions rose by 1/3 to $163 billion in constant currency terms. Thirdly, group service revenue grew by 21.1%, and the EBITDA margin widened to 47.6%. Both these are in constant currency terms. Fourth, our balance sheet remained strong, with group leverage at 0.2x and our HoldCo liquidity headroom of ZAR 42.6 billion.
We also saw good cash upstreaming in the period as well as post the period. Tsholo will cover the details on this a little bit later. The fifth point is that we made good progress in our strategic initiatives in our fintech business, most notably the completion of the structural separation in Ghana, our largest fintech market, as well as progress in Nigeria. Continue to engage the authorities in Uganda towards the completion of the separation in that market. We also advanced the progress of the IHS transaction, engaging regulatory authorities as part of the approval process. As you can see in our separate SENS announcement, the pro forma results for 2025 showed that the transaction is value accretive in terms of service revenue, earnings, and free cash flow.
The sixth key message is that in the uncertain geopolitical environment, we remain focused on the resilience of our business. We remain highly engaged with partners such as IHS on diesel supply to ensure that we meet our customary high levels of network availability. In terms of our overall performance, strong commercial execution underpinned our sustained growth in the quarter. Overall subscribers grew 5.4% year-on-year, outpaced by growth in the number of data subscribers, which increased by 8.7% to 175.6 million. Our MoMo users also grew by more than 8% to 67.4 million monthly active users. Strong structural demand for data continued with the number of petabytes consumed on our network increasing by 20.2%.
Our fintech platform processed 15.8% more transactions in the first quarter of 2026 than in the same period in 2025, and the value of these was up by 32.8% in constant currency terms. On a reported basis, transaction values was up 71% to $163 billion in the quarter. If we turn to our key markets, we see that MTN SA reported solid growth in postpaid, enterprise, and data revenue. We were encouraged by the above-inflation performance of both postpaid and enterprise segments in SA and by the 4.9% growth in data revenue. The prepaid market continued to be tough in Q1, as expected and previously communicated. Deliberate actions were taken by management to reset the base for healthier and much more sustainable growth over the medium term.
This resulted in the overall MTN South Africa service revenue increasing by 0.7%. MTN SA reduced its penetration on XtraTime advances as a percentage of recharges during the period. They have reduced penetration from around 42% to about 34% as of the end of the period. This was done to ensure sustainable advances to customers in order to drive repayment of advances within the month and not to overexpose customers to the impacts of recovery. It is also consistent with what we told the market with our annual results in March. We are working on initiatives to turn this prepaid business around and drive more sustainable growth, but it's not a quick fix. The other deliberate actions that we took and spoke about before are the simplification of bundles and sales and distribution initiatives.
We feel encouraged by some of the early trends in cash recharges as well as prepaid data that are coming through as a consequence of these deliberate actions. Prepaid data grew 3.8% year-on-year in the first quarter, a solid sequential improvement on Q4 2025, which was a growth of 0.8%. MTN SA's network leadership remains a clear differentiator in the market and provides a strong platform to support customer experience, retention, and disciplined commercial delivery. MTN Nigeria reported a strong set of results at the end of April in line with the medium-term guidance. They grew service revenue by 41.7% in constant currency. This was led by data revenue, which increased by 56.1%, and Fintech grew by 77.8%.
The sustained strong commercial momentum, disciplined cost management, and accelerated network investment translated into robust demand for a solid financial performance for this business. Towards the end of the period, we saw elevated geopolitical tensions drive energy prices higher, leading to fears of renewed inflationary pressures over the short to medium term. This was partly mitigated by the stronger naira. In a more supportive macroeconomic environment led by a sharp slowdown in inflation, MTN Ghana reported strong service revenue growth of 35.7%. Data revenue led the overall results growing by 52.3% as data traffic increased by 63.4%. Moving on to fintech, we saw service revenue increase by 20.1%. We continue to scale this business and are pleased with the progress we're making with our Mastercard commercial partnerships.
We now have almost 700,000 virtual cards in use across the key markets. As promised with the re-release of our FY 2025 annual results, today we issued the voluntary 2025 pro forma financial effects of the IHS transaction which were announced in February. The regulatory process to finalize the transaction are ongoing, and we will provide updates as and when these are warranted. The pro forma financial effects show that the transaction is value accretive in terms of revenue, profit after tax, adjusted headline earnings per share, as well as free cash flow. Subject to approvals, we anticipate that the transaction should close in the second half of the year. With that, let me pass on to Tsholo, who will provide an overview of our financial performance. Tsholo?
Thank you very much, Ralph, and good afternoon to everyone. It is my pleasure to walk you through the financial review of our performance in the first three months of the year. We are really pleased to present a strong set of financial results. These have been delivered against the backdrop of improved conditions and good execution by the various teams across the MTN footprint. In terms of the overall performance, group service revenue grew by 21.1% in constant currency, and the EBITDA margin widened by three percentage points to 47.6%. This was led by strong EBITDA growth in four West African markets, in particular, these being Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, as well as Cameroon.
As we worked to deliver on our purpose of leading digital solutions for Africa's progress, we continued to invest to sustain the quality, the coverage, and capacity of our networks, and to ensure that ours are the platforms of choice for consumers, homes, and businesses. Total capital expenditure invested in the period reached ZAR 9.6 billion. This translated into CapEx intensity of 16.4%, which is within our target range of 15%-18% and in line with levels in prior periods. The balance sheet remained resilient with group leverage of 0.2 times and holding company liquidity headroom of ZAR 42.6 billion.
In the first three months of this year, the OpCos upstreamed a total of ZAR 2.3 billion in cash to the group. Importantly, since the quarter end, the group has received another ZAR 5.3 billion in cash from Ghana, as well as ZAR 2.7 billion from Nigeria. MTN's strong financial performance in the first quarter was again driven by data revenue, which increased by 35.4%. Voice is not on the slide, but you'd have seen from the SENS that we continue to grow revenue from our voice business, reporting voice revenue growth in constant currency of 4.7%. In our fintech platform, we reported top-line growth of 20%, which is in line with indications given at our annual results in March. Advanced services revenue continued to grow strongly. In line with our strategy, it was up 36.7% in the quarter.
We continue to focus on growing fintech revenue from advanced services, as we've indicated, and this remains strong in the quarter. The group EBITDA margin in constant currency for the three months expanded by three percentage points to 47.6%, supported by our various expense efficiency initiatives. Turning now to the performance of our major subsidiaries. In the first quarter, you'll see that MTN SA service revenue was up by 0.7%. Ralph explained the reasons for this, which are mainly competitive pressure in prepaid, coupled with the deliberate actions taken by management to make the segment more sustainable. MTN SA's EBITDA margin was 4.1 percentage points lower at 32.6%. If we exclude the impact of the provision for share price plan, the EBITDA margin was 2.7 percentage points lower at 35.4%.
Touching on MTN Nigeria's performance, which was in line with medium-term guidance, service revenue grew by a strong 41.7%, moderated by the base effects of the price adjustments that were implemented from the middle of quarter one of 2025. Strong commercial momentum combined with operational discipline kept operating expenses well contained in Nigeria, delivering meaningful operating leverage. The EBITDA margin therefore widened to 55.3% by 8.7 percentage points. MTN Ghana continued with its disciplined execution of strategic priorities, driving strong top-line momentum. Service revenue increased by 35.7%, driven largely by a 29% increase as well in fintech. Combined with a tight cost control, the sustained top-line growth translated into EBITDA growth of 42.9% and a 3.1 percentage point expansion on EBITDA margin to 61.2%. Now on to the rest of our markets portfolio, which continued to perform well.
As you can see from the slide, we are now reporting according to our new operating structure. This groups MTN operations into the Southern and East Africa region and as well as the Francophone Africa region. In the first quarter, MTN operations in our Southern and East Africa region grew service revenue by 19%, ahead of average blended inflation of 18.1% and driven by double-digit gains in data, voice, as well as Fintech. The overall margin was slightly softer at 44.3% versus a year earlier. Within this region, MTN Uganda's performance was hampered by internet shutdown during the general elections that took place in January this year. Service revenue grew by 7.6%. However, normalizing for the impact of the election shutdown, service revenue growth would have increased by 11.5%.
The performance was also impacted by changes to mobile termination rates by the Uganda Communications Commission in the period. In the Francophone Africa region, MTN OpCo delivered service revenue growth of 8.7%, which was also well ahead of the region's blended average inflation rate of 2.3%. EBITDA for the region continued to grow, with the margin expanding to 37.5%, which was up 3.8 percentage points. In this light, we call out again, Cameroon within the Francophone, where service revenue grew by 14.4% and the EBITDA margin widening to 44.2%. With that, I will hand over back to Ralph to give our outlook and priorities for the rest of the year. Thank you, Ralph.
Thank you, Tsholofelo, I'll now turn to our outlook and priorities. You'll have seen these key areas at our annual results, we remain focused on following through with these in the next seven months of the year. Firstly, in an uncertain global environment, we are focused on maintaining the resilience of our business. The focus for us is on ensuring diesel availability, we're comfortable with the risk mitigation actions taken by tower companies on availability. As an example, IHS in Nigeria secured additional supply, increasing the reserves from two months cover to three months cover. In Nigeria, you know, over the next period ahead, we feel pretty comfortable with the supply in terms of diesel.
Secondly, we aim to sustain the commercial momentum across all our markets, allocating capital to opportunities with clear growth and return visibility. The third point here is to deliver recovery in MTN South Africa's prepaid business performance. We have been encouraged with the near-term trends we're seeing in prepaid cash recharges as well as prepaid data trends, whilst the decline in voice continues as expected. Next, this is the fourth focus area, which comes to commercial and strategic priorities for our Fintech business. We're focusing on progressing with the structural separations for Nigeria, we had the shareholder vote, you know, a few weeks back. Uganda and other markets post the conclusion for Ghana.
The fifth and final bullet here concerns the completion of the IHS transaction, which are progressing with regulatory filings and anticipate the transactions to close in H2 2026. We have maintained our medium-term guidance, which reflects our growth ambition and investment case over the medium term. As we said in March, we expect MTN SA to track at the lower end of the medium-term ranges for this calendar year. For Nigeria, we have reiterated guidance and given sensitivity to diesel price movements where the business released results at the end of April 2026. We also expect fintech to track slightly below the guidance range for a few quarters as we manage the competitive and pricing pressures coming through in some markets such as Cameroon and Uganda. We are comfortable with the leverage and liquidity position of the business.
With that, thank you very much, and let me hand over to Roy to direct the Q&A.
Thanks, Ralph. We received a number of questions, and I'll try and bundle them into relevant groups.
The first one is, on South Africa, we are getting mixed signals from you and your closest peer on the challenging environment with MTN seemingly more bearish. Can you help us understand what you're actually seeing on the ground in terms of the consumer and competition and from MVNOs? Why do you think there is such a discrepancy with you and your peer?
That's the first question.
Yes. If you, if you That's the first question. Then the second question that keeps recurring is around diesel costs and energy costs. First of all, how much of your OpEx across the group is linked to the diesel and fuel cost? Just related to that, what is SA's and MTN Group's EBITDA sensitivity to a 10% or 20% increase in diesel prices? I think if we, if we started with those.
Well, those two. Okay.
So-
Tsholo, can you pick up the one on diesel costs, and then let me start with the one on the SA consumer view.
Okay.
Yeah. On SA consumer, I mean, our view is that the consumer is in, you know, not too bad a shape as we exited the quarter. Obviously, with diesel, petrol prices going up, I think there's going to be, you know, a pickup on inflation. I think all the inflation indicators are that inflation will pick up, there will be second-order effects potentially around levels of food inflation. The consumer is not in too bad a shape relative, you know, you know, to probably people's expectation. What we are seeing, though, is that part of the consumer wallet is being taken up by online betting, I think enough, you know, commentary and reports are out there around that. In terms of disposable income, I mean, the fight for disposable income has certainly been impacted.
I think where there may be differences, you know, will come to, you know, the actions that we are taking on prepaid. You know, we'd like to pull back on the exposure of consumers to the use of XtraTime. We think that there is a healthy level of XtraTime in the base directed at the right customer base, and we believe that we should implement full recovery of the air time advanced. I don't think there is a consistent approach in the market around full recovery. Our understanding is we're probably the only, you know, business that's doing full recovery on XtraTime. You know, as we've looked at the base, we think that is the right thing to do, is to kind of pull back, which obviously hurts in the near term.
We've said we anticipate Q1 and Q2 will still be tough as we do that. We're seeing healthy growth on cash recharges, which is giving us, you know, confidence that the actions are the right one for sustainability. You know, prepaid data, the sequential progress we're seeing quarter on quarter, you know, is also helping us. You know, we are also making changes around distribution, increasing much more bank direct recharge, and also that's got us some short-term pain, which we're going through. To that question, I think you've got to think through how we are approaching the prepaid market relative to peers.
As I said, the big difference for us is that we are looking for full recovery of prepaid within the month, as opposed to having these, you know, almost inverted commas as, you know, kind of rolling debts. That's been our approach. Tsholo, you wanna talk to the point around-
Yeah
-cost and sensitivity?
Thanks, Ralph. I mean, if we look at it, within the context of OpEx intensity, I think if you just take diesel only, it's probably between 10%-15%. Total energy, if we include electricity, would probably be, you know, between 15%-20% as a percentage of group OpEx. I think from a sensitivity perspective, and obviously something that, you know, we are seized with as a company-How we think about it is that a 10% change in energy cost would probably have an impact of between 0.4 percentage and 0.7 percentage points impact on our EBITDA margin. South Africa is relatively insignificant. I think most of you will have been on the Nigeria call, and you would have heard that Nigeria is the largest within the group in terms of those costs.
Thanks. Thanks, Tsholo. Just sticking to the diesel question. Apart from Nigeria, which other markets were you would you expect a impact on margins from higher oil price?
Yeah, I mean.
Yeah, I mean, I can take that.
Go ahead, Ralph.
Absolutely. I was gonna say that there are probably two others, which would be Cameroon, because, you know, part of the network, you know, relies on diesel, and then Zambia in particular. The other markets, I think are less, are kind of more resilient. It's more Cameroon and Zambia, to be specific.
Okay, just going back to the prepaid question. On SA, how much of your prepaid revenue is driven by XtraTime? Also, it's interesting that you're reducing your reliance on XtraTime when the consumer is under pressure. What are you seeing that your peers are not seeing? How's the cash recharge momentum over April and May?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think what we said is that XtraTime is probably currently around 30%, 34%. I mean, it's come down given the interventions that we are making. Sorry, what was the second question?
How is the cash recharge momentum over April and May?
We obviously have seen an improvement, which was really the intention in the first quarter of the financial year, we expect that to improve further. I think we'll provide you with details as we do H1. We're comfortable that we've seen an improvement since we last spoke to you in December.
Just sticking to that theme, can management provide some color as to whether the trend of declining XtraTime advances is occurring beyond SA and Nigeria? That is there a broader trend to return to cash top-ups across the markets?
I mean, maybe just to top and tail on Tsholo's prior question, I think there was also a question around why would you pull back right now where the consumer is under pressure. I mean, I think my overall comments was that the consumer is, you know, fairly resilient, not in a fantastic shape. Right now, not so much under pressure. I mean, we can debate, you know, how much inflation will spike as a consequence of diesel and fuel prices. I mean, we're just looking at this thing, you know, with the view of the medium to long term to say, you know, recharge behavior, you know, should not be as dependent on XtraTime. We think that's much healthier.
As we look to markets elsewhere, in emerging markets, we see, you know, almost In some markets, there's an absence of airtime advance even though consumers have, you know, the equivalent disposable trends. You look at India, you know, you won't see such a product. I mean, we have to do this responsibly. We just think that that is the right thing to do, is to have, you know, somewhere around a third Sorry, somewhere around 30% or thereabouts is probably the right number. We're moving, you know, towards that level, you know, across our base. The question is, you know, are we seeing it, you know, in other markets?
I mean, I think our view is, when across our markets will be that, you know, we want a healthy level of the customer base exposed to airtime advances. You know, markets all differ, but I think as a thematic and a trend, we think that's the right place for us to be. I think we've got actions in other markets as well. You know, we feel that that's directionally the right place. It's not like zero, but certainly, you know, bringing it back a little bit, you know, to drive more cash recharges.
Okay, on upstreaming. Your cash upstream from the OpCos has been around ZAR 11 billion as opposed to ZAR 17.4 billion for the whole of last year, suggesting very strong momentum. What's your outlook for the rest of the year? Should you expect the full year number to grow in line with operating free cash flow?
I mean, I think if you think about it, and we've just reported now that post the quarter end, we've received additional upstreaming from Ghana and Nigeria. I think in line with what we communicated at our year-end results, we do expect our cash upstreaming to obviously improve, particularly because, you know, Nigeria now is fully declaring dividends. We've seen an improvement, of course, due to, you know, performance as well in Ghana. I think if you think about it, you know, our dividends in those markets are based on, you know, a percentage of distributable earnings. The rest of the markets, as we see an improvement in performance, we then expect to see improved cash upstreaming.
Just shifting to fintech, given how strong Airtel Africa stock is doing ahead of its MoMo IPO, would you consider a listing as well? How would you rate your MoMo business in Africa as compared to competition?
On the second part, obviously, we would rate our MoMo business as, you know, strong and resilient and with, you know, good runway growth over the medium term. That would be our position. I think you would assume that we'd say that. In terms of the IPO, and I think we've said this before, is that, you know, where our focus is on is, you know, growing the ecosystem as quickly as we can, as sustainably as we can. That's our priority. Drive as quickly as we can the shift towards advanced services. I think you'll have seen in our results, you know, very good, strong growth when you look at a vertical like BankTech. BankTech, which we've said over time, is super critical.
We focused on that. We focused on ensuring we have the right licenses. We're looking at, you know, what license regimes do we need for the long term, and we will discuss that more at CMD. For us, it's all about capturing the growth and as sustainably as we can. The IPO in of itself for us is not necessarily a something we're driving towards. I think, you know, in years to come, that may be something we look at, but we're not. There isn't a deadline we're working to, and I don't think you should anticipate an IPO from MTN in the near term, certainly not in the next 2 to 3 years. You know, our focus is just grow the business sustainably.
And I think you will hear at the CMD quite a lot from Serigne and myself around, you know, the work we're doing around the platform, the partnership with Mastercard, the progress we've made on structural separations and, you know, how do we get growth at the level of our guidance and above in terms of both service revenue and expanding margins. The issue of the IPO near term for us is not something that is front and center.
Your reported EBITDA margin of 47% is a multiyear high. Do you think this is sustainable?
Yeah, I mean.
Well, I mean.
We
Yeah. Go ahead, Tsholo.
We confident that, you know, we can sustain the margin. If you think about the various, you know, operating companies, how they're performing, we're confident with the work that we're doing in South Africa, you know, over the medium term. We believe that they will recover into the 35%-37% EBITDA margin corridor. We continuously look at our you know, what we need to do from a cost discipline perspective. Our expense efficiency program continues, and that's where we get our comfort from.
Okay. Just moving back to Ralph, there was significant improvement in the MTN Côte d'Ivoire margin. Maybe if you could give some color as to what the drivers to this margin expansion were.
Yeah. I think we're pleased with the overall competitiveness of the business. The business was struggling for some time, to be frank, huh. you know, on the connectivity business, you know, we did up the level of CapEx in second half of last year, and we've sustained the kind of growth, adding new sites, particularly in and around the areas Abidjan and so forth. we've seen, you know, a clawback of market share, particularly around, you know, the number one in the market being Orange there. we think we can sustain the growth, and that turnaround, you know, has been pleasing. We still have some work to do, really around, you know, the Fintech business there.
As we've looked at sequential quarter-on-quarter, the CapEx we've put down, the closing of the site, total sites count to Orange, that's helped and sustained the level of growth that we've seen. That's why we made the call out particular on Côte d'Ivoire. I mean, it's an economy the size of, we say to our teams, "It's an economy the size of Ghana, but it's generating a quarter of the revenue, so there must be some upside in Côte d'Ivoire going forward." I think you'll see us allocating capital to Côte d'Ivoire, to sustain the pleasing growth that we're seeing there.
Okay. Back to Tsholo. Any update on the buyback plans? Along the same lines, please provide color on the higher bad debts in SA EBU. Will this persist for the next few quarters?
Yeah. I think on the last question on the EBU, I mean, it is an ongoing effort to try and reduce. I think the first thing that we do, obviously, make sure that we have the right credit management policies in place. I think we have, you know, a policy obviously where customers don't pay, that we cut off after, you know, various interventions, after looking at, you know, payment plans. We have a robust process in place. Again, you know, with, you know, Enterprise, it's mainly one or two government customers where obviously we are struggling. But we, there's ongoing effort to make sure that we can recover. I think that's only the first one.
I think as we've indicated in South Africa specifically, there are other interventions we're looking at to try and, you know, manage the working capital to, you know, acceptable levels. That's the first one. The second question again?
The buyback.
Oh, the buyback. Yeah. I mean, I think obviously as we indicated, we will continue to look at, you know, opportunity for buyback where it makes sense given the criteria that we have given as well. We will provide you with, you know, additional update at our H1 results or even at the Capital Markets Day that is coming. Yeah.
Yeah, just sticking with Tsholo. Because of the charge, the share-based payment charge in MTN SA, at current share prices and without additional provisions, would you expect margins to remain within the medium-term guidance for the balance of the year?
I mean, I think how we look at it, we do think that because it's driven by the share price movement of MTN Group shares, the right thing to do is obviously to adjust for it. If you normalize for that, we comfortable that we will still be within the 35%-37%. Obviously, with the interventions that we're looking at to recover prepaid, the cost interventions, we take comfort that we will see an improvement in margins in SA.
Just sticking with you on CapEx intensity, do you think you'll maintain this run rate for the rest of the year? Or do you feel that the CapEx that was announced now had an element of front loading?
Yeah. I mean, it's a mixed bag, you know, of OpCo by OpCo. We obviously look at, as Ralph indicated, what we're doing in Côte d'Ivoire. Each OpCo is looked at in terms of their performance, ability to generate free cash and whether there's a need to, you know, front load CapEx. In other markets, obviously, we will hold back depending on their performance. Take it that, you know, whatever guidance we've given for the year, we're comfortable that we will be within that CapEx intensity range. Some markets will be, you know, ahead like Nigeria, where we see, you know, exponential growth, Ghana, for instance.
We're also mindful of, you know, obviously the global impact, and we continue to monitor that very closely in terms of, you know, how we deploy capital. Yeah.
Okay. Moving back to Ralph. From Iran, it was encouraging to see quarter-on-quarter growth in subs and ARPU despite the conflict in the country. Is this because you had a good Jan, Feb? What was the impact in March, and where are we now in April and May?
Yeah, look, I mean, as is noted, you know, there's ongoing conflict and, you know, the internet, the global internet, let's call it that, you know, has been shut down or is not. There's a bit of whitelisting in the market, you know, to access the global internet. There is a local internet that's there. I don't think one should read kind of too much into the trends. I mean, what we normally find is that there are situations where there is increased activity on the network. You know, election results or periods of uncertainty, people end up talking a lot or communicating more than they normally do. I would ascribe, you know, the trend that you're making reference to that more than anything else.
Election periods, times of strife, et cetera, you know, people end up talking or using data a lot more than is usual. Nothing more than that would be my comment on those trends and results that you are referencing.
Just sticking with you, Ralph. On IHS.
Yes
in the disclosure, we noted significant earnings accretion. Does this factor in any synergies that you previously talked about, such as listing costs, funding costs, diesel consumption? Would leverage increase significantly once the IHS transaction closes?
Yeah. I mean, with pro formas, as investors would know that there's a very strict, you know, requirements around what you disclose. I think on the first page of pro formas is just the results as reported for FY 2025. It's not to be, you know we're not putting that out for you to think about guiding on an ongoing basis. Specific to the questions, one is there are no synergies in those numbers. You know, we believe that there are meaningful synergies, but there are no synergies in the numbers that we disclosed, 'cause that would be kind of forward-looking, but there is none of that.
I think Tsholo has previously raised that, you know, we're gonna have to raise about $1.1 billion worth of debt. We will pick up, you know, the 0.2 group leverage will increase and, I think on a pro forma basis, you see it's there at 0.8, 0.7, 0.8 on the pro forma. That it will increase, but it'll come back into range, you know, over a very short period of time so, because of, you know, the earnings generated and internalized from holding 100% or a controlling stake in IHS.
Just sticking with you, Ralph, have you seen any impact from the free voice offer from Capitec so far?
I think that is very early. I mean, they announced it. It's, for their base and the subscribers that they have. It's early, you know, to attribute any impact that we're seeing, but certainly we'll continue to monitor. Yeah, we'll watch what happens in Q2, you know, going forward and, you know, report accordingly if we think that there's been an impact with our H1 results.
That's all the questions we've received so far. Maybe I'll hand over back to Ralph for closing comments.
Yeah. Thanks very much for taking the time to join on this earnings call. I think as you will appreciate that we're very focused on, you know, ensuring the resilience of the business. A big priority area is really around diesel availability and ensuring, I think, you should take comfort from our comments that we're on top of this and we are talking to IHS and related in ensuring that availability is not an issue. Obviously, you know, diesel prices, you know, are a function of market prices, we'll manage that. I think we've clearly communicated the sensitivity, particularly to Nigeria.
Nigeria is the most sensitive, as I mentioned, you know, Côte d'... Sorry, Cameroon and Zambia that one would look at, and Tsholofelo Molefe gave you kind of the overall sensitivity for the group. You know, we have expense efficiency actions to mitigate. When there are pressures at the OpEx level, you know, we do look to accelerate some of those expense efficiencies, delay some more discretionary spend. The other issue we are focused on is resilience on key components, SIM cards, server equipment, anything with chipsets. We're managing that so that we don't have any disruptions and ensuring business continuity. That is an area of focus for us.
You know, continuing with the momentum and execution of our commercial strategies, you know, executing on IHS, on the FinTech side, and making sure that we deliver in line with our commitments in terms of our medium-term guidance. Finally, we hope to see, you know, all of you, if not most of you, for our Capital Markets Day, which will be held in Johannesburg, 10th and the 11th. There's format day one where there's presentations, and then day two, you know, we've created a platform for investors to spend time with the SA team, Nigeria, Ghana markets, and then Tsholofelo Molefe and myself for more strategy and capital allocation. We look forward to you joining us there.
Yeah, I think for those who are making the trip, it'll be a trip, you know, worth making to engage with Tsholo, myself, and the senior leadership team at the MTN Group. Thanks for joining us again. Back to you, Roy.
There are no more questions from the conference call. With that, I'd like to bring this call to an end. Thank you for spending this time with us. If you have any questions, please send them into the investor relations inbox. We'll be happy to follow up from here.