MTN Group Returns to Profit, Declares Surprise Dividend as Currency Pressures Ease

MTN Group declared a dividend well above analyst expectations on Monday as Africa’s largest mobile operator returned to profit, buoyed by an easing of the currency devaluations that had battered its earnings the previous year.

The Johannesburg-based company announced a payout of 5 rand per share for 2025, against a median analyst estimate of 3.82 rand. Profit jumped to 20.3 billion rand, reversing the damage caused in 2024 when sharp currency moves — particularly in Nigeria, MTN’s second-largest market — weighed heavily on its results across its 18-country footprint.

The board also approved a new shareholder returns framework, committing to a minimum annual distribution of 40 per cent of equity free cash flow, with the possibility of raising that to 60 per cent through special dividends or share buybacks of up to 6 billion rand ($356 million) over three years.

However, MTN’s long-running attempt to exit its 49 per cent stake in Iranian mobile operator Irancell — a process it initiated in 2020 — remains effectively frozen. US sanctions against Iran, in place since 2018, had already made the sale difficult. The outbreak of conflict on 28 February has complicated matters further.

Chief executive Ralph Mupita acknowledged that the company had lost visibility into its Iranian operations entirely. MTN had seconded three staff members to Iran, but as of mid-January, “we don’t have people on the ground,” he said. “We have no insights into the operational detail on the network in current time.”

MTN has held the Irancell stake since 2006, when it signed a deal with the Iranian government — an arrangement underpinned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has neither extracted profit nor invested in the operation for nearly eight years. The company cautioned that sovereign, regulatory and commercial risks meant it could fail to recover full market value if forced to sell.

On the infrastructure front, MTN is pressing ahead with its acquisition of tower company IHS Holdings, which will sit within the group’s infrastructure division alongside a fibre network spanning east to west Africa and a portfolio of data centres. Mupita described the three assets as the pillars of MTN’s push into the broader digital infrastructure market.