Good day, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Airtel Africa full year results call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. For the participants on the webcast, please type your questions in the webcast question box. For the participants that have dialed in, there will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. If you should need assistance during the call, please signal for an operator by pressing star and then zero. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Segun Ogunsanya. Please proceed, sir.
Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today. As always, I have with me Jaideep, our Group CFO. I have Pierre, who is Head of Investor Relations. Let me give you some brief highlights of the year and update you on our strategic vision and priorities before handing over to Jaideep to run through the results in detail. This year, our business and the economies where we operate have faced considerable challenges, but our business has managed it much stronger. We have seen considerable progress on our priorities as we continue to deliver strong revenue growth and maintain our very high margins despite significant inflationary pressure. This profitable growth has allowed us to not only continue investing to support future growth potential, but also to further enhance our capital structure through a very disciplined capital allocation process.
As our business grows, we continue to create value for all of our stakeholders. We create more jobs, directly or indirectly. We pay more tax. We invest in infrastructure that is key to the development of these nations' economies. We continue to bring communities closer and give them the opportunity to access affordable financial services, sometimes for the very first time. This enables us to further increase returns to our shareholders. From a strategic perspective, our focus has been on investing in the future group potential our markets offer, which includes 5G spectrum, as well as investments into fiber and data centers. In Nigeria, our largest market, we've also continued to invest aggressively. We've launched our mobile money service called SmartCash, which will support increased financial inclusion across the country and it will supplement future growth.
Operationally, we continue to expand our customer base, grow our ARPU, and increase 4G network coverage. Both mobile money and data continue to be our growth engines, although voice continues to grow double-digit as well. Financially, I'll let Jaideep talk through the details, but at a very headline level, we continue to deliver double-digit revenue growth in reported currency and have sustained our EBITDA margin despite the inflationary pressures. We continue to strengthen our balance sheet and the board has recommended a total dividend of $0.0545 for the full year. This is a reflection of our very solid trend. The momentum on our sustainability strategy remains unchecked, and it continues to be embedded in everything we do. It will be very helpful to provide some context around our very strong operational performance.
Let me start by reminding you that our industry is not immune to the macro and geopolitical challenges across the globe. We have adopted various initiatives to mitigate against those challenges. Consumer spend remains impacted by high inflation. With affordable and transparent offers, we continue to see customer growth and higher usage driving strong constant currency revenue growth in our portfolio. On inflationary pressures, especially a rise in energy costs, this has been particularly challenging for our cost base. We continue to focus on cost optimization, allowing us to report a resilient margin performance. Currency volatility across the region is not something new, nor is something we can control. Our strong constant currency performance has ensured double-digit reported revenue and EBITDA growth.
Finally, despite the first liquidity challenges across some of our markets, we've been very successful in upstreaming over $1 billion of cash from our OpCos to de-risk our balance sheet. Let me now update you on our strategic priorities and our achievements that highlight how this strategy is working for us. First, to start putting our business into context by reflecting on the opportunity our various markets offer. This slide captures the key drivers of Airtel Africa's future growth potential. The demographics are in our favor. Combined with the low level of SIM penetration, we continue to support the growth in our customer base. As usage of the key services continue to develop, this will support continued strong revenue trends. Importantly, the mobile money journey is still at a very early stage across all of our markets, especially in Nigeria.
As a group, we're very clear on how we will continue to capture this growth. Our win-win strategy has consistently delivered on our performance to date, and we don't anticipate this changing in any way. Additionally, execution has to be successful. The last 41 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth has shown that as an organization, we have the right framework and mindset to continue delivering. The chart above, chart number 9, reflects our growth algorithm, which has supported our operational success historically, and will continue to underpin our growth aspirations in years to come. As customers increase and use cases continue to develop, ARPU and revenue growth remains very strong.
Our focus on costs allow us to drive strong efficiencies, which combined with operating leverage, drives strong free cash flow generation, which is then used to invest for the future and to sustain further customer growth. This cycle will continue to sustain our strong operating momentum in future. Slide number 10. This algorithm is depicted on the previous slide, is reflected in our delivery of double-digit revenue growth across all three service offerings, voice, data, and mobile money. Slide 11 shows our group strategy. The six wins. There are six pillars which are designed to capture the growth opportunity as a way to transform lives in Africa. Our strategy is clearly working. However, we continue to seek ways to enhance our service offerings to enable sustained growth and create value for all of our stakeholders.
The next few slides, I would like to show you our strategy in action. The first one is win with distribution. Slide 12. Here you can see how we have continued to extend both our exclusive and non-exclusive distribution channels significantly over the year. Our primary objective is to increase the scale of our distribution, reduce friction, and get very close to the customers to support rising usage and revenues. We have almost 1.8 million touch points for our customers, which have reached over 40 million customers across our 14 markets. A focus on digitization is important to improve the customer experience and reach. We put great focus on giving the opportunity to both recharge and onboard digitally. The next slide is an example of what we've done in Zambia using this distribution pillar.
We have seen constant increase in agent network, and the very strong partnership with the trade has made Airtel the go-to brand, resulting in a 40% increase in distribution points and an almost 50% increase in Airtel Money agents, driving a 15% growth in customers and over 30% growth in revenues. Next slide, win with technology. The focus for this pillar is on increasing capacity to sustain customer experience, increase coverage, and start future-proofing our network through Massive MIMO and importantly, 5G. This is all underpinned by best-in-class IT infrastructure. We have continued to add new network sites. We've added about 2,700 in the last year, with over 1,000 of these in rural areas. We have maintained our focus on modernizing and increasing capacity. With over 90%, 9 out of 10 sites on 4G. Fiber rollout remains a priority.
With the rollout of over 6,000 km of fiber with a total of over 70,000 km of fiber deployed across our network. In addition, we've been investing in new data centers as a way to further enhance the future growth potential across our markets. Slide 15 shows our technology strategy in action in our largest market, Nigeria. Through focused planning and with a continued focus on efficiencies, we have spent over $600 million on network investment and spectrum over the last year to increase capacity, enhance coverage, and future-proof the business with selective 5G deployment. Despite usage on our network being 44% over the last year, the strong customer experience remains intact with a peak hour data utilization rate of only 50%. This has enabled Nigeria data revenue growth of 20% in constant currency. Moving to slide 18. It speaks to our data strategy.
Our technology strategy continues to support our win with data strategy. Using Single RAN technology and with increased fiber rollout, we have deployed a network with significant data capacity. We have generally invested in 4G ahead of our peers and across the group, over 90% of our sites are now 4G capable. When combined with our smart, affordable, and transparent data bundle offers, customer data usage was up almost 30%, driving a 46% growth in data traffic across our network. In DRC, we represent a great example of our data strategy in action. This is evidenced by this slide, which shows how despite increased pressure on consumer spend, like you've seen in almost all parts of the world, our competitively priced data offerings, combined with 4G network coverage expansion, drove our 4G customer base up by almost 40%.
This contributed to a 63% increase in the total data traffic carried across the network, making us the leading data provider in DRC. Moving to slide number 18, where we describe our win with mobile money strategy. The lack of traditional banking infrastructure in our markets means that the number of customers who are able to access traditional banking services is far lower than even the numbers who have bank accounts. Our focus remains on building this distribution network, increasing the use cases, and ensuring the reliability of the platform. This focus has resulted in a 27% increase in our exclusive distribution channels, meaning our money branches, mini shops and kiosks, and also our multi-brand agents by over 44%. The traction with customer is clear. With continued output growth and annualized transaction value of over $100 billion in Q4 of 2023.
Uganda is a great example of our strategy to enhance the use cases. We already have a very strong and large mobile money business in Uganda. This has been further strengthened by the launch of the Quick Loan product, which provides an instant loan to cover a payment shortfall, and it appeals to a broad range of customers. It's being used by more than 250,000 customers with a transaction value of over $8 million a month by March of this year. This was one of the many use cases that contributed to revenue growth of over 20% for the financial year. The next slide number 20, summarizes the success of the previous two slides that I've shared with you.
A 20% growth in customer base combined with 40%+ growth in the transaction value as use cases expand, has resulted in 30% revenue growth for the mobile money. With this level of growth and a high margin of almost 50%, the opportunity for us to add additional value over and above what other telecom players in the industry can deliver remains very significant. Slide 21 shows the continued evolution of our mobile money ecosystem. We still see the digital wallet caching and caching services as a major source of mobile money revenue. There's a huge growth potential for this from a business of penetration with new customers. There is also a continued diversification of the business towards additional payment solutions and also more sophisticated financial services like insurance, loans, investment, and stock trading.
Slide number 22 highlights the opportunity from our new PSB license in Nigeria, where we are very strongly positioned. We have made significant progress over the year where we have prioritized investment into the reliability and trustworthiness of the systems and product offering. As our confidence around the platform stability has increased, we have accelerated our investment into the distribution network, and we have seen some initially encouraging performance with 12 million wallets opened and over 600,000 active customers. Given the early stages of this rollout, we are prioritizing investment into the system and customer acquisition before revenues. The key for annualized transaction value for the PSB business is approximately $413 million. Suggesting a significant opportunity as the product gathers momentum.
Our strong presence across the market, alongside our investment into forwarding the distribution network, positions us well to maximize the opportunity available to us. The next slide is our win with people strategy. Our values and culture continues to be very critical to our ability to deliver on our business strategy. This is underpinned by a strong governance culture. Improvements in gender diversity, and we continuously strive to make further progress on this agenda. Now on sustainability, before I finally hand over to Jaideep. I've been particularly pleased with the progress we've made on our sustainability journey. Following the launch of our first report in October last year, we have made significant progress in two key areas. Number one, we have launched a UNICEF partnership across six of our courses. It's eventually going to cover 13 countries, but we have launched 6 already.
Providing free educational resources to over 250,000 children this year. This is the beginning. We're here to provide these services free of charge to more than 1 million children by 2027. Secondly, we have done considerable work on our emissions reduction plan, and I'm encouraged that the work has shown our 2050 net zero emission to be achievable and will be supported by specific decarbonization initiatives that would enable substantial reduction in emissions intensity of over 60% by the year ending 2032. This slide highlights the progress across all of the four pillars of our strategy. The pillar of business, people, community, and environment. I look forward to continue reporting on this very important strategy, which underpins everything we do. Let me now hand over to Jaideep to review our financial performance.
Thank you, Segun. Good morning and good afternoon to all of you. Let me start with the key financial highlights. Slide 26. On overall terms, we have delivered a good set of results. We continue to expand our customer base by 9% year-on-year to reach 140 million customer. This helped us to continue our revenue and EBITDA growth momentum. Revenue growth for the full year was 17.6%, with Q4 growth accelerating to 18.6% in constant currency. Underlying EBITDA grew by 17.3% in constant currency to reach $2.6 billion of EBITDA. Margin 49%, flat year-on-year despite inflationary cost pressure. Operating free cash flow at $1.8 billion was up by 10%. Leverage at 1.4x was broadly stable, despite $500 million of spectrum investment during the year.
The board has recommended a final dividend of $0.0327 per share. The total dividend for the full year will be $0.0545 per share, up 9% from last year, in line with our dividend policy. Coming to next slide. All our key service segments of voice data and mobile money grew double digits in constant currency. Revenue in reported currency grew by 11.5%, while constant currency revenue growth was 17.6%. The differential in growth rate was due to currency devaluation, mainly in Central African franc, which is largely pegged to Europe, the Nigerian naira, Kenyan and Rwandan shilling and Malawian kwacha, partially offset by appreciation in Zambian kwacha. Coming to the next slide on the segment performance. First, Nigeria.
Revenue grew by 20%, supported by both customer base growth of 9% and ARPU growth of 7%, despite the impact of cash shortage in the country in Q4 2023 due to demonetization. Voice revenue grew by 13.4%, driven by customer base growth and stable ARPU despite NIN impact in the first quarter of the year. Data revenue grew by almost 28%, contributed by 17.3% customer base growth and almost 10% growth in data ARPU. We further expanded our 4G network with 99% of our sites in Nigeria are on 4G. This resulted in usage per customer growth of almost 25%, while 4G usage per customer grew by almost 50%. EBITDA margin at 51.3% dropped 423 basis points as a result of rising fuel prices and increased inflation.
Coming to East Africa, revenue grew by over 17%, driven by double-digit revenue growth in all three services of voice, data, and mobile money. This revenue growth was supported by customer base growth of around 10% and ARPU growth of 9% to reach $2.7 per customer per month. Voice revenue grew by 12.2%, driven by customers as well as ARPU growth. Data revenue grew by almost 23%, driven by 20% growth in customer, over 9% growth in data ARPU. We further expanded the 4G network across the region. 47.3% of total data customer are 4G customers, up from 40.5% of the last year. Mobile money revenue grew by 32.6%, driven by over 80% growth in customer base and around 10% ARPU growth.
Underlying EBITDA margin was 53.3%, expanded 193 basis points as a result of revenue growth and cost efficiencies. Coming to Francophone Africa, revenue grew by around 13% in constant currency, while reported currency revenue growth was 6.2%. Mentioned, the difference in the growth was largely on account of devaluation in Central African franc, which is largely pegged to EUR. Customer base of around 29 million, up 7.8% year-on-year, while ARPU grew 3.8% in constant currency to reach $3.7. Voice revenue growth was around 9%, driven by customer base growth. Voice ARPU was largely flat due to decline in interconnect rates in Niger and Congo B.
Data revenue grew over 16%, was largely driven by over 9% growth in customer base and around 8% growth in data ARPU. Mobile money revenue grew over 20% due to 18% growth in customer base. EBITDA margin at 46.6%, improved by 220 basis points. Adjusting $19 million one time OPEX benefit that we had during the first half of the year, normalized full year EBITDA margin for Francophone country was about 45%. Next slide. We show group underlying EBITDA growing by 11.4% in reported currency to almost $2.58 billion. Underlying EBITDA has been adversely impacted by $133 million as a result of currency devaluation in multiple OpCos, including Nigeria.
The underlying EBITDA margin was at 49%, flat, year-on-year, despite rise in energy cost and increased inflation across geographies. Impact of the fuel price increase was $245 million for the full year, out of which $215 million was in Nigeria. We managed to offset most of this impact through operational efficiencies alongside disciplined cost control in various other areas. Next slide. As you can see, we have a strong track record that reflects a very efficient operating model that has driven margin expansion over the last four years. We continue to focus on margin resilience as we move to next financial year. Next slide. Let me spend a few minutes discussing the finance cost, as I'm sure it is an area of interest for all of us.
As you can see, finance cost in excluding foreign exchange and derivative loss was higher than last year, reflecting the higher interest on lease liabilities and other finance charges. The largest impact on a year-on-year basis was a $245 billion increase in foreign exchange and derivative losses arising from currency devaluation, which resulted in the restatement of foreign currency denominated debt and liabilities. As you can see in the chart on the right-hand side, this includes losses on revaluation of bank debt, lease liabilities, creditors, shareholder liabilities, and derivative losses. We are actively working to reduce the impact of this currency devaluation on our income statement. Firstly, we are moving U.S. dollar debt into local currency debt at the operating company level.
64% of the OpCo debt is OpCo market debt, is now in local currency, and we continue to focus and keep converting the foreign currency loan into the local currency loan. Secondly, these liabilities are paid within local currency, but about 50% of these liabilities are pegged to the US dollar. We'll continue to work with our companies, our partners, to reduce this further. For creditors, we have been working with our partners to move some dollar CapEx to local currency CapEx. Finally, as we continue to upstream cash from the operating companies, we will look to reduce the shareholder loan across various geographies. Going to the next slide. Operationally, we are happy with our performance with double-digit growth in revenue and operating profit. However, Forex has impacted our EPS.
After normalizing the net impact of this Forex and derivative losses, the EPS before exceptional item would have been $0.206, an increase of over 13%. The Forex and derivative loss has adversely impacted the EPS. Basic EPS was $0.177 in FY 2023 as compared to $0.168 in FY 2022. EPS before exceptional item was dropped to $0.136 in FY 2023 as compared to $0.16. That is because of the Forex and derivative loss. Coming to next slide. Our capital allocation policy remains unchanged. As mentioned earlier, our priority remains to invest in the business, at the same time aim to further strengthen the balance sheet. CapEx guidance for the next year is slightly higher, between $800 million and $825 million as compared to the last year.
This includes data center CapEx of roughly about $40 million. Secondly, to return cash to shareholder through a progressive dividend policy. The board has already recommended a final dividend of $0.0327 per share, which is a total dividend for the full year, $0.0545, which is up by 9% as compared to last year, in line with our dividend policy. Slide 36, we continue to invest in future growth. We have invested $748 million in FY 2023 in tangible CapEx during the year. In addition to this, we have also acquired spectrum in Nigeria, Kenya, DRC, Zambia, Tanzania, for an investment of about $500 million.
87% of our CapEx investment is geared towards growth initiatives, which combined with spectrum purchases ensures a strong and reliable network for the future. We have also rolled out 6,000 km of fiber network in last one year, resulting into 70,500+ km of total fiber network. Coming to the normalized free cash flow. During the year, we have generated $121 million of cash from operation, post-tax and interest payment. Our cash CapEx pays were higher by $70 million. Lease liability payments were higher by $28 million. Non-controlling interest was higher by $27 million. Our normalized free cash flow before spectrum investment was largely stable as compared to the previous year despite the Forex segment.
Our $472 million of increased spectrum payment was due to the total $500 million spectrum investment in current year. Our normalized free cash flow for the full year was $82 million. The next slide. Our investment decisions are made only if they are following a stringent return on investment criteria, which is clearly reflected in the trend of our return on capital employed highlighted in the chart. Our ROC has improved 101 basis points during the year and almost 7 percentage points in the last 2 years to reach 23.3%. We continue to strengthen our balance sheet by firstly reducing our foreign currency debt, especially at Holdco. We have prepaid bonds of $450 million over the last 12 months as a result of strong cash upstream from our OpCos.
As you can see, our upstreaming potential is very diversified across our region, not making us overly reliant on one specific region. Secondly, our OpCo market debt increased by 29% to over $1.6 billion, in line with our strategy to push down the debt at the OpCo level. Group leverage at 1.4x has remained largely stable compared to last year, this is in spite of the fact that we invested about $500 million in the spectrum. The total weighted average interest rate was 7.7% vis-à-vis 5.6% in the last year due to increase in the base rate, increase in local currency OpCo debt, and the repayment of Holdco bond, which had a lower interest rate. I will now hand over to Segun to conclude the presentation. Over to you, Segun.
Yeah. Thank you, Jaideep. Finally from me on slide number 41, few words on summary and outlook. As you have seen from our results, our focus has contributed to strong operational and financial performance, we continue to demonstrate positive developments on nearly every key metric. Our net term focus will remain on investing in our network and on further expanding our distribution to be closer to our customers, while at the same time building new services for future growth, such as the PSB opportunity in Nigeria, as well as ambitions for data center growth and fiber rollout. We remain mindful of the currency and repatriation risk, which are largely outside our control, our results continue to demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategy and our strong execution by us.
The growth opportunity remains very intact, and we see ourselves well positioned to deliver against this growth with a continued focus on EBITDA margin resilience. With that, I would like to thank all of you for your attention today. I would now like to open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, for the participants that have dialed in, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star and then one on your touchtone phone or on the keypad on your screen. If you decide to withdraw your question, please press star and then two to remove yourself from the list. For the participants on the webcast, just a reminder, if you want to ask a question, please type your questions in the webcast question box. We will pause to see if we have questions. The first question comes from Jonathan Kennedy-Good from JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question, Jonathan.
Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Quick question on Nigeria. Just obviously a solid result there, but trying to understand whether you will push for price increases given stubbornly high inflation rates there. Perhaps some color on what you think the government may allow there. Also, of the $1 billion that you up-streamed, can you tell us how much of that was in the fourth quarter and how much came from Nigeria? Finally, in terms of the mobile money potential value realization via listing, is that kind of on the back burner for now, or can you talk to a timetable for that, given where we are in terms of the market cycles at the moment? Thank you.
Thank you, I mean, Jonathan. I'm gonna take your last question first on the mobile money listing. About 2 years ago, we said we're gonna list the mobile money business in 4 years then. 2 year down the line, we're still committed to that deadline. Nothing has changed. We're still committed to listing our mobile money business in 2 years' time. That is a commitment we've given, and we're standing by that commitment. On your second question about repatriation from Nigeria. We've done about $1 billion from different countries in our 30 portfolio. About $360 million-$370 million of that came from Nigeria. That is a fact. In terms of how much we took out in fourth quarter, I will get back to you on that.
As I speak now, $1.37 billion out of that came from Nigeria. You spoke about price increase. Price increase is regulated in Nigeria. We've got a different philosophy around, I mean, revenue growth and around data. We have the philosophy of growing our revenue by growing customer base and growing customer usage. Our philosophy is to get a lot more customers, get them to use a lot more of voice for voice, a lot more minutes, a lot more data, a lot more money. That's the according of our own growth. Despite the fact that, I mean, we were asked to revise a price increase we took in Q3, we still grew revenue in Nigeria by 20%, voice and data. Price increase will be welcome. We continue to work with the regulators on when we let them approve the price increase.
Despite the fact that we don't have a price increase, we've got our own pillar of growth, which is, I mean, a smaller customer base. Let them use the network for more voice, more data and eventually more mobile money. That's how we've done. We've grown Nigeria in the last full of quarter. That's how we're gonna continue to grow. In terms of remittance in the last quarter, Jaideep Paul would give us a figure.
Yeah. Jonathan, in Q4, we have upstream in total $304 million, out of which $150 million was from Nigeria. The full year we have upstream of $1 billion, out of which $388 million from Nigeria.
Thank you very much. That's really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Maurice Patrick from Barclays. Please proceed with your question, Maurice.
Yes. Thanks for taking the question. I'll just ask a couple, please. First question on spectrum. You've spent half a billion dollars this year on spectrum, mostly in Nigeria. Just could you update us in terms of what visibility you have on other spectrum auctions coming up in the next 12 months? First question. The second question, you know, we've had lots of noise on mobile money around new entrant disruption and Wave made lots of noise. It feels as though some of that new entrant disruption seems to be going away. I was just curious for an update from you guys in terms of how much competition you're seeing from new entrants in that space. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Maurice. Let me take the second one first. In terms of Wave, I mean Wave came like a wave, but we're not seeing any more waves, so I'm just not sure how sustainable that model is. They did very well in Senegal. I've not seen that replicated anywhere. They came to Uganda, and we took the fight to them. That's how much about Wave. We've got a very different model for growing mobile money. It's based on the distribution infrastructure that we've built over the years. On top of that, we've got a captive base for our mobile money business. From that captive base, we're able to convert customers to mobile money. We have three layers of services we offer. We offer mobile wallet, we offer payments, we offer financial services.
These are clearly distinctive, I'm just not sure how any fintech can replicate, I mean, what we've done given the resources and the advantages we have. We're good in terms of mobile money. You can see this in Uganda where we're competing against the mobile operator and against Wave and in other of our countries in East Africa. Talking about spectrum, we spent half a billion dollars on spectrum last year. We bought spectrum in Nigeria, we bought in Zambia, we did Tanzania, we did Seychelles, and Kenya and DRC as well. Close to half a billion dollars. Couple of days ago we renewed our 3G license in Nigeria. Paid another $120 million-$130 million to renew the 3G license in Nigeria. I don't expect any major outflow for spectrum for license renewals, I mean, this year.
The major part of the half a billion dollars we spent last year was from Nigeria. The 5G spectrum was about $285 million. That was a big chunk of the money. On top of that, we also bought additional spectrum in 2.6 GHz in Nigeria. Almost $300 and something million of that half a billion was spent on Nigeria. This year, I really don't expect any huge outflow of spectrum, and I've not seen anything that would suggest that a major outflow is gonna happen on spectrum in this financial year.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Cesar Tiron from BofA. Please proceed with your question, Cesar.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I have two, if that's okay. The first one would be on CapEx for 2024. Do you have any formal guidance or can you please at least tell us if CapEx in dollars is likely to be higher or lower than what you spent in FY 2023? The second question would be on 5G in Nigeria. Can you please mention how far are you in the rollout, and how many sites you intend to have 5G enabled, let's say in the next two to three years?
If you believe that there is a use case for fixed wireless solutions in Nigeria for 5G. Thank you.
I'll just give you a top overview of the CapEx, and Jaideep Paul will give the further information on the CapEx. We did about $750 million last year. This year we're looking at $825 million. Increase coming mainly from additional money we want to spend on data centers. Data centers in Nigeria, data centers, I mean, in Mombasa, in Kenya. That explains, I mean, the increase from the $740 million-$750 million we spent last year on CapEx. On 5G launch, we continue to invest, I mean, for future growth of our business. 5G investment, the 5G spectrum we bought across multiple countries is a reflection of our belief in the future potential of 5G. In the short term, we will continue to deploy 5G.
We have, I mean, very limited use cases in the short term. The focus is on how we can use 5G to deliver broadband. Remember, in Africa, fiber broadband is very limited. Our focus is how do we use 5G to deliver broadband to homes and small businesses? That is one use case. The bigger use case for mobile devices is still very limited now, given the very low penetration of 5G devices and the relatively high prices of 5G devices. As soon as they become cheaper, we expect a deeper penetration of 5G devices, and I like to believe that, I mean, a lot more consumer use cases will follow. For now, we're buying this for the future.
In the short term, we're gonna use the 5G to deliver broadband, and the initial focus is launching of 5G in select neighborhoods, select neighborhoods in select cities. Basically, we're looking at key cities of Africa. Lagos, of course, is one. We're looking at Zambia, we're looking at DRC, we're looking at Uganda, but just the very major cities in each of those countries. When we're talking about major cities, we're also talking about the very inflationary neighborhoods where we reckon there's sufficient purchasing power. That is, not 5G devices, and they can afford at least to pay for the devices that will consume 5G. To summarize, I mean, it's gonna happen. Is it needed? No. Is it the right thing to do to prepare for it? Yes. Spectrum is limited.
If you don't buy it now, you're not gonna find it to buy when you need it anyway. We just decided to buy it ahead of the opportunity that is offered us.
Okay. On the CapEx, let me give you a little bit more detail of the CapEx. Firstly, for next year, our guidance for CapEx is between $800 million and $825 million, out of which about $40 million we have earmarked for the data center build-up into two countries, Kenya and Nigeria. The balance of the CapEx largely will be between network, IT, sales and distribution, and Airtel Money. A large part of the CapEx, I would say about $600 odd million, $600 million-$650 million will be network. Network rollout, expansion, capacity build, fiber, et cetera. About in IT, there will be a IT infrastructure investment plus Airtel Money IT infrastructure investment, about $75 million and $100 million.
Of course, we have a distribution expansion, the kiosk, the branches, the hands, you know, the KYC devices and so and so forth. Broadly, that's the way our CapEx is to be built up for next year. Overall, it will be between $800-$825, including the data center. Roughly about 65%- 70% of our CapEx is dollar-based. That's broadly about, Steve, if I take 70% of $800, that's about $550 miliion-$560 million will be dollar-based.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Rohit Modi from Citi. Please proceed with your question, Rohit.
Thank you for the opportunity. Just two questions from my side. On the Mobile Money in Nigeria, if you can share, you know, any internal targets you have when you start generating revenue from the Mobile Money side in Nigeria. Also any KPIs that you can share at this moment in terms of what how many agents and, you know, merchants you have already on board and what's the current status on that side. When you talk about margin resilience, can you add more color on between the geographies? You saw a decline in margins in Nigeria, and it was much better in East Africa and Francophone.
Does that the kind of mix you will see next year as well in terms of the substantial increase in margins in those two regions, and then again, Nigeria will go further down? Also, if there is a potential price increase that happens in Nigeria, if allowed by the regulator, do you see an upside risk to your margin resilience guidance in that case? Thank you.
Thank you, I mean, Rohit. On the Mobile Money business in Nigeria, like I said in my opening remarks, we're prioritizing customer acquisition ahead of revenue growth, I'm confident we're on the right path. In terms of KPIs, we've acquired about 600,000 active customers. We opened over 12 million wallets. 12 million wallets, out of which 600,000 of them are very active. In terms of the agent network that is required for flow, for cash, for acquisition of customers, we've registered about 125,000 customers as of end of March, out of which 52,000 are active. The key figures are, 1, active wallets, 600,000. Total number of wallets, over 12 million. 2, number of agents, 125,000, 52,000 are active.
In terms of transaction value. If I'm to analyze our Q4 transaction value, it's looking like $500 million. Q4 times four transaction value that went through our chain is $500 million. In terms of when we're gonna make money, I mean, the take rate in Nigeria is relatively low. It's about 0.3% compared to 0.5%, 0.6%, 0.7% in other countries where we operate in. Remember, it's also a very large country with very, very many potential customers. The algorithm for us in the first quarter is just continue to expand our customer base. Once we get a certain stable level of customer base, then we continue to look at the money. We're very optimistic that it's gonna be value addition to our portfolio. Talking about the margin picture.
We've got a portfolio of countries, portfolio of regions. Nigeria is of course a region and it's a country. We've got a contraction in margin in Nigeria, but we had expansion into other regions. East Africa expanded, West Africa expanded, and that helped us minimize impact on the group EBITDA. As I've said earlier, EBITDA is more or less stable at 49%. Despite the huge headwinds we had on fuel, headwinds on other inflation, we still delivered stable EBITDA at 49%. Jaideep, you want to add more information?
Yeah. before I think that Segun you can address the price increase question.
On the price increase, once again pricing is regulated in Nigeria. We continue to engage the regulators that given the level of inflation in the country, given the headwinds around the currency, we require pricing to really maintain the health of the industry. Beyond this, we very, very committed to our own growth algorithm. Which is using customer base expansion, growth increase in usage, talking about consuming more minutes, voice, consuming more data, megabyte. Those are the two clear pillars we use for growing our revenue. Onboard more customers, let them use more voice, let them use more data, and of course, the pricing comes in suite now. Without pricing, we've delivered 20% growth in Nigeria in constant currency and I think double-digit growth in reported currency as well. We've got a formula that works for us in Nigeria.
In terms of EBITDA, I'm sure that Jaideep give more color to this. We have, I mean, a simple philosophy around stable margin as well. That for every 100 dollars we add to our top line, at least between $50 and $55 should go towards the bottom line. $1 out of $1, $0.50- $0.55 should go towards the EBITDA line. That's what we've done consecutively in the last 21 quarters. That's a formula that I mean, we hold very dearly, and we do everything possible to maintain that formula. Between 50% and 55% flow through from top line to EBITDA. Maybe Jaideep you want to...
Segun mostly you have covered this. Just one couple of points I want to add that last year, just to remind you, we have got impacted by about $245 million due to fuel price increase and largely in Nigeria. Our dependency on fuel or the DG or generator in Nigeria is higher than any other country because of the shortage of grid power availability. While fuel price increase has also happened in some of the East African country, however, East African country, we are fortunate that the grid power availability is much higher as compared to Nigeria. That's why we never seen that kind of impact.
We are actively working with the tower hosts, the tower companies, to see if we can participate in contributing in terms of conversion of some of these sites into solar, high, higher capacity batteries, so that we can reduce this impact or any future impact to a substantial level. However, we as you know that last year the diesel price in Nigeria has moved from 320 NGN a liter to 800+ NGN a liter as we exited in March. Obviously it is unprecedented. Whether next year there will be further increase, further pressure on the diesel price, we don't know.
If we assuming that no significant increase in the diesel price, our margin, as you have seen, is quite resilient and we continue to thrive, as Segun has mentioned, in terms of incremental flow through over 50% in the margin for every dollar which we generate incremental.
Rohit, does that answer all your questions?
Thank you.
Thank you. Sorry, just one last thing. If you can quantify what was the impact of demonetization on the voice revenue in Nigeria, or any guidance on that side?
Demonetization took a lot of cash out of the system in an economy that is predominantly cash. The impact on our performance is 3% in Nigeria, and for the group is about 0.6% on the overall the top line for the group.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Just to add on the demonetization. While demonetization has been withdrawn, and we have seen the trend coming back in Nigeria in the month of April. It has come back to the pre-demonetization level in the month of April.
Thank you.
Thank you. Just another reminder for the participants on the phone lines. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star and then one. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star and then one. At this time, I will hand over for questions from the webcast, and then we'll return for questions on the phone lines. Thank you.
Yes, Olusegun Ogunsanya, a couple of questions from the webcast. First is, what do you think is the average rate of inflation across our market? Were to take a guess. The second one is on Kenya. What is our strategy to continue to grow shares in the market and any possibilities of a public listing in Kenya for Kenya?
I did talk about inflation and I will take the Kenya story.
Inflation excluding Malawi and Nigeria, the inflation ranges between 8% and 10% across all other geographies, which is very normal. In Nigeria and Malawi, we have seen the inflation trend between 18%-20%.
Back to the Kenya story. As part of our license obligation, there's a requirement to list in Kenya. For the last couple of months, there's been discussion around whether that condition is gonna be changed or it's gonna stay. We still are being waiting for clarity from Kenya whether there's been an obligation to this. We are working on ways to comply with any lawful requirement of our license. If we are obliged to this, we will list. Once again, there's been some indication from Kenya that this may not be a requirement. Whatever requirement is, we will meet that requirement. In terms of growth, of course, Safaricom is clearly dominant in Kenya, but I've been very pleased with the progress we've made in mobile services segment. We continue to gain share, we continue to acquire customers.
Kenya, if you actually isolate, the mobile money business and focus on, only the mobile services, is a very significant part of our portfolio. I'm very pleased with the progress we're making in the growth of our mobile services business in Kenya.
Back to you, operator.
Thank you. Are those all the questions on the webcast?
Yes. Back to you, operator.
Thank you. The next question on the phone lines comes from Faisal Al Azmeh from Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question, Faisal.
Yes, thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Most of my questions have been answered. It's just maybe it's just a question more about the portfolio of countries that you have at the moment. You know, you've been operating in this inflationary environment for a while. Do you see any room to effectively rationalize some of that exposure? Is that part of some medium-term strategy, or do you feel that you're comfortable with the current footprint that you currently have? My second question is more towards the... obviously, you've done a decent amount of work on deleveraging the balance sheet over the past few years.
Do you feel you might actually now go back to a more progressive dividend policy in terms of linking it to the free cash flow level? Or you're actually quite comfortable with how the policy currently stands out? Thank you.
On dividend, of course, it's directed by the board. We do have a progressive dividend policy. We increase by the single to high digit. I mean single digit, per single digit. We've done 9% increase in this financial year to deliver $0.0545. That's our policy. We continue to look at different issues, investment required in our business for future growth. We decide on what the right mix is. Jaideep Paul will give you more flavor on the, on that. Talking about the portfolio of countries, we operate in 14 countries. It's a balanced portfolio. We have countries in East Africa, we have countries in West Africa, we have countries in Central Africa. We have English-speaking and French-speaking. We have hard currencies.
We have soft currencies. In most of the French-speaking countries, I mean, they use CFA. CFA is linked to the euro, which is more or less a means, I mean, a hard currency. Of course, we have weak currencies in some countries. In terms of the attractive mix of our portfolio, I think, it's a balanced portfolio. It is delivering its purpose. We continue to grow very strong double digit. EBITDA is 49%. We're one of the fastest growing telcos in Africa. Our EBITDA is best in class, in the top quartile in terms of performance. I think it's a portfolio that delivers despite the many challenges in Africa. Despite inflation, despite devaluation, we continue to deliver good growth in reported currency. That gives you a fair spread of our portfolio.
I see no immediate reason to change, my faith in the power of our portfolio.
With reference to the debt profile and the leverage, et cetera, let me tell you that out of 1.4x , if you exclude lease liability, which constitutes about 0.8x out of 1.4 in this leverage, and this finance lease obligation is nothing but as we add 3,000, almost 3,000 sites on an average every year, this obviously this goes up. There are sites which are going out of finance lease obligation. It is more or less 0.8x static for quite some time now.
In terms of our focus, our focus is, as we mentioned in our main presentation, that focus is strengthening the balance sheet. Reduce the Holdco level debt, which we have done by and large, already achieved. The next, the last piece of the bond which is due in May 2024. After that, there is no Holdco level debt which remains. We pushed down the debt at the OpCo level in local currency, which comes with a slightly higher interest cost, but it also reduces the impact of devaluation and restatement of, or revaluation of the, of the Forex debt. Our clear focus in short to medium term is to now keep pushing down the debt at the OpCo.
Second is keep pushing, making local currency debt rather than dollar debt at OpCo, that we can de-risk our balance sheet in terms of the devaluation risk. That is our current position in terms of the overall debt management portfolio and leverage.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Madhvendra Singh from HSBC. Please proceed with your question, Madhvendra.
Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Couple of quick ones, and then one maybe a bit detailed one. If you could talk about, you know, the growth rate in mobile money, especially in the Francophone African markets, seems to be a bit slower than the overall annual run rate, especially during the Q4 period. If you could talk about is there any real underlying slowdown there or is just a seasonality issue? The second question is also on mobile money, but for Nigeria. While we don't see any revenues being booked, has the commercial activity just started already? If you could share what kind of transactions are happening on the network, what dollar values. Maybe you have made the transactions free right now.
If you could talk about what's actually happening on the ground on mobile money side in Nigeria, that will be helpful. Yeah, so these two questions. Then on the margin side, you had a very resilient margin obviously for, you know, for the year, but also for the quarter. So wondering, you know, if you are seeing any risks going forward, and maybe you know, how confident you are of maintaining these margins as well as, especially, you know, if you also look at the mobile money business, you know, how confident you would be of, you know, maintaining these margins. Thank you.
Okay. Let me, let me start with the margin story first. I've explained our margin philosophy earlier on. The fact that for every increase, $1 increase in the top line, our objective is to make sure between $0.50 and $0.55, I mean, goes towards the bottom line. We've done that really just for the past 21 quarters. We have a number of ways we use to deliver this. One is a very, very firm cost control process. We also continuously review our operating army process to take processes out. We have a very efficient, I mean, CapEx deployment machinery that would deploy CapEx that would lead to reduction in operating expense. We've mentioned the fact that we're working with TowerCo to migrate some of our energy sources from diesel to battery to solar.
We also continue to increase, I mean, the grid component of our energy sources. There are a number of things we do to mitigate the impact of inflation in cost. In the last year, the major impact has come from diesel energy, which is why we continue to work with TowerCo partners to find other ways of powering our sites. That speaks to battery, that speaks to solar, that speaks to grid. We're working on this. On top of this, we just have a very lean structure that continuously takes cost out of the system. We continually review our operating model to make sure things that shouldn't be there they're not done very cheaply. We're just very, very firm on the constant review of our processes to take cost out of the system.
Now let me take you back to the mobile money in Nigeria. We got the license April last year. We started business in June of last year. Our initial focus, once again, was to have an improved IT platform that is essential to build trust, to build transparency. We spent time in building this IT infrastructure, IT platform that will be fraud-proof, that will give confidence to our customers. I think we're in a very sweet spot now. Very confident that what we've done is fraud-proof. It would deliver dry services to the customers. Will also let us configure as many products as possible. We invested time behind this. We invested money behind this. We've done that. The second thing we've done in the first couple of months is the distribution infrastructure. Acquiring agents, setting up mobile branches, setting up kiosks, setting up mini shops.
We've done that very well. The testimony to how we've done that is what we saw in Q4, which is actually our first real month of outcomes. We're able to open 12 million wallets for the full year. As of end of March, we had 600,000 active customers. I've mentioned we have 52,000 active agents. In terms of revenue, if I'm to analyze, I mean, the throughput in Q4, of our PSB business in Nigeria is close to $500 million. The take rate is very low in Nigeria, My focus for now is not even on take rate. It's on just building the structure that would give sustainable revenue in future.
I'm willing to spend the next couple of quarters increasing its infrastructure, build, the right level of customer base that would make it profitable in a low margin economy, because the margins are quite low in Nigeria. Unlike what we have in other parts of Africa, where take rates are between 0.6%, 0.7%, the take rate in Nigeria is at 0.26%. The key to success have been a very large customer base, and that is what we continue to work upon in the first time in a few months. Now, back to French-speaking Africa. We are looking at the growth rates in for mobile money. In our French-speaking countries, we've grown the mobile money revenue by 20%. Is I won't say that is a bad growth. 20% is not bad.
That's what we've done in the French-speaking countries. In East Africa, where we have most of our sources countries, we've grown revenue by almost 33%. That's the way the growth is bifurcated between the two major regions where we have substantial mobile money business. East Africa is where we have most business in mobile money anyway, and we've done 32%. French-speaking Africa is about 20% growth the full year.
The Q4 growth was only 16%. That's what I was talking about.
Yes. Let me, let me try to also add what Segun has said. We have to keep in mind that Franco's countries, we have 7 countries in Franco, out of which only 2 countries, which I would say, Gabon and DRC, are actually the mobile money business which exists and both are growing at a very substantial rate, I would say more than 20% in both the places. Rest of the places, you have to keep in mind that we just started. Because we got the license in Chad, Niger, Congo B, very recently. We are just ramping up those countries. We have to probably wait few quarters to see that growth, what you see in the East African countries.
Because East African, most of the markets, I would say four or out of six countries are quite mature and a very well-established Airtel Money business. This Franco country, as and when the business will start picking up, the mobile money business will start picking up in the other country, Franco will also go back to a decent growth rate as you see for East Africa. East Africa is blessed because we have four countries out of six countries which are pretty mature mobile money market. In Franco-
Comes from Kayode Eseyin from CardinalStone Partners. Please proceed with your question, Kayode.
Yeah, hello, good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity and congrats to you on, well, what is an amazing performance, at least on the top line level. My first question is as regards to the discrepancy in operating performances across your regions. I noticed, and I think you mentioned on this call, in East Africa and Francophone Africa, EBITDA margin expanded while Nigeria reported some 4 percentage points and pullback. The explanation or my understanding is that most of it was due to diesel costs rising, diesel prices rising across Nigerian business, almost tripling. My question is, I know for a fact that the energy price issue was mostly broad-based. Several countries, almost everywhere around the world were witnessing energy pressures.
My question is, what exactly were the levers you were able to pull in other regions? Were you able to raise prices? What happened? Why was your performance there significantly badly on an EBITDA level compared to Nigeria? Secondly, your strategy on redirecting debt from holdco to opco. I would like to understand because I know for a fact that the cost of debt in your operating countries, Nigeria, Kenya and several of these countries is significantly higher than your KD cost of debt at holdco levels. My question is, what exactly are the benefits you're hoping to accrue by transferring debt from cheaper holdco to operating countries where you have double digits interest rates?
Then also, do you have like a target debt to EBITDA ratio that you're looking at? Maybe at what point do you think or you'll start to deleverage? At what point do we start getting worried about leverage? Thirdly, the other question I have is, well, as we've seen, data continues to be the major area of growth for Telcos or MNOs, particularly in SSA. My question is, how large do you see how large do you think there is level for data growth or how long do you think this runway is for before you start seeing some maybe slowdown in growth for data for data usage?
Do you I how convinced are you about the usage use case for 5G, especially considering the fact that SSA continues to have the largest number of people below the poverty line? Those are my questions. I hope I was audible.
Let me start with the first one about immediate word. There are structural differences between the various regions and countries. Nigeria has a very low level of grid availability, we've got a very dependence on the diesel for powering our sites. Unlike in East Africa and French-speaking African countries for us, where we have a relatively decent level of grid availability. That means we don't have over-reliance on diesel. That's a major difference. That is why you're not gonna see a massive impact on performance in French-speaking countries, East African countries, compared with Nigeria, where we rely mainly on diesel to power the sites. That is one point of difference. The second point of difference, speaking about East Africa specifically, is on the fact that last financial year, we actually sold some towers in East Africa.
We sold towers in Malawi, we sold towers in Tanzania. That also affected, I mean, our revenue. That slowed our revenue. By the time you offset one against the other, you begin to see why we had a very relatively better EBITDA margin this year in East Africa and French-speaking Africa compared to the slowdown in Nigeria. Talking about the debt profile, I'm sure Jaric will give, I mean, more information on the debt profile. Why are we pushing debt to the OpCo? There are tax advantages. There is currency match as well. Jaric will give you more information on this. The last piece on the data growth there. In terms of data revenue, let me give you, I mean, a few data points.
In terms of data consumption, across our portfolio is about, I mean, 4.45 gig per person. In contrast, let me take Asia or India as an example. It's close to 16 gig per person. That shows a very long runway available between what our customers are consuming and what a typical consumer consumes in other countries. That's a very, very long runway. That gives us a lot of optimism that with continuous investment in 4G, with 4G devices becoming cheaper, then we gonna continue to see very, very high level of growth in data revenue as well. Secondly, if you look at the population profile in our territories, we've got the fastest growing population, I mean, in the world. Most of the people are very young, below 20, 21. Median age is about 19 in Africa.
That shows that, I mean, young people are very many. What do young people do? They consume data. Where do they consume data? Mobile devices. They are mobile first, mobile only. If you consume data on iPhone, Samsung, Nokia, any phone, you're using the 5G created. With this huge number of young adults, huge number of children we have, some of them entering the digital divide for the first time, either because we've expanded our network to where they live or become able to afford the device to consume, I mean, 4G to consume data, that shows a very long runway available for us to continue to grow data revenues. We still, I mean, there is figures on the growth. I'm firmly optimistic that, I mean, we're still gonna continue, I mean, to grow data volume, I mean, in Africa. Talking about 5G use cases.
I've identified home broadband as a major use case for us. Given the very, very low penetration of fiber broadband in Africa, I think 5G can be a good vehicle for deploying broadband to small businesses and to homes in Africa. That we're gonna do. We're also beginning to see pockets of 5G handsets in rich neighborhoods, in some parts of our key cities. We would offer those folks maybe 5G as well. There are some enterprise use cases that I imagine as well. We seize this opportunity. In one of our countries, we are actually deploying a private network for one of the mining operators in one of our countries. Such niche cases are also coming to view, and we are positioned to capture those opportunities in the medium, in the long term. Jaideep, do you want to talk about the debt?
Yes. Few things we have to keep in mind, which we stated earlier, and today also we discussed it. As we stated that one of our objective is to push down the debt in local currency at the OpCo, for primarily for two reasons. If you see historically, the devaluation impact, the CAGR 3-year devaluation, if you see across various geography, you will see an average devaluation of 8%-10% CAGR, almost on every year. That's our average. I'm talking about the average devaluation. There can be little bit plus minus here and there, but that's mainly in the East Africa and Nigeria.
Also, we have to keep in mind that if we source dollar at Holdco at 6%-7% and push down that debt to OpCo, there is no tax shield on the interest which we pay for that servicing that debt. Whereas in the local currency or if the debt is pushed down to the OpCo level, you get a straight 30% tax shield or 30 or the applicable tax shield, but average, let's say 30% tax shield on that debt, on the interest which you pay. Number one. Number two, we also avoid this 8%-10% average devaluation, which we have seen. There is no requirement of any restatement of the local currency loan. We have to also keep in mind that this is a natural thing that our...
Most of our income is in local currency, therefore, the endeavor should be the expenditure as well as the debt should be in local currency so that there is no mismatch between the income, which is in local currency, and the debt profile, which should be ideally in local currency. This is our endeavor. Whether we'll be able to do it in a short term, the answer is we'll require some time because the markets in each country are different, the financial market. We are clearly focused on doing this activity over the next couple of years so that we minimize the impact of devaluation as well as start getting the tax shield on the interest part of it.
Thank you. At this time, I'd like to hand over for questions from the webcast. Thank you.
Last couple of questions, Simon Coles and Jaideep Paul. First is there more tower asset sales to expand?
Okay. We've got only two countries left, the countries are.
At the moment, yeah.
Gabon and Chad. They've got very strict rules on private towers, of course. We continue to work with regulators and interested parties to vary the rules, liberalize to make it possible for towers to be sold. These are a very small number of towers anyway. We've got only two countries left to go. The rules are just slightly different from the rules in other countries on sale of towers.
Now to close, unsurprisingly on Nigeria. Could you give some color on the Nigeria rate that you used of staying cash from Nigeria? One. Second one is this cash crisis in Nigeria can be a boost for the mobile money development in the country? Thirdly, if there is any plan to raise that instrument in Nigeria?
Well, in terms of the demonetization, like I said earlier, the impact is fully over. It ended in March, so we're back to growth. Out of every strange policy, something good comes out of it. I expect this to really encourage customers to open wallets, and I'm sure they're gonna open SmartCash wallet as a wallet that works. That's probably the good thing that will come out of this. We're pushing a lot more people to digital channel rather than keep cash under their bed or keep cash in their wallet. I see that to be a boost for our business. In terms of debt instruments, there is an opportunity I need to issue debt instrument commercial papers.
The rates are quite cheaper than taking bank loans, and I'm sure that Pier and Jaideep are looking at various options of having the right structure for our business in Nigeria and in other countries. That is a possibility. The last question, did I miss anything?
The rate.
Well, in terms of rate, I mean, we access foreign exchange from banking sources in the country. We don't use parallel market sources for accessing foreign ex in any of our markets. The rates are determined by the banks. They're bank to bank to customer rates, and we just comply with the rates given by the banks. We use official sources to access foreign exchange. That's the facts.
Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we can now close the call.
Thank you, gentlemen and ladies. Have a good day.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you very much for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.