Airtel Africa Plc (AAF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Airtel Africa conference call for its results for the 9 months till December 31, 2020. The presenters for this call are Raghunath Mandava, CEO of Airtel Africa; and Jaideep Paul, the CFO. [Operator Instructions] Please also note that this event is being recorded. Without further ado, I'd like now to hand over to Raghunath Mandava, Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Africa, who will lead today's call. Over to you, sir.

Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us on today's call. As you would have heard, Raghunath Mandava, the CEO of Airtel Africa; and I'm joined on the line by CFO, Jaideep Paul; and Deputy CFO and Head of Investor Relations, Pier Falcione. We will be answering any questions you may have. But first, I would like to give an overview of the quarter that passed by. We are all going through this deadly pandemic to various extents across our various geographies. Governments in Africa and the countries that we operate have managed them very well within their limited resources. Over the last many months, the number of cases have been coming down. However, there seems to be a fatigue amongst people on the safety measures, and the safety measures are not being adhered to as well as it was done in the earlier period. And just as we thought the number of cases were coming down, we are now seeing a small jump in a few countries, perhaps a new variant or mutant that is spreading across some of the African nations. We have discussed in the past that we will see less people open [Audio Gap] around, and this means there will be a greater voice usage. We will see natural supply chains disrupted and rural markets will be affected. We also spoke of a shift in data usage and the increased use of money. All this while the economies are generally moving to lower levels of GDP and people are having lesser and lesser dispersible incomes. We have worked to support our customers by improving our voice capacity, greater rural site rollout, managing data capacities, ensuring better and assured availability of both recharges and mobile money, both in urban and in deep rural. We have continued our investments during this period. [Audio Gap] and have added almost 2,500 sites over last 12 months, taking the total to about 24,700 sites. In order to help remove balanced depletion shock for our customers, we have reduced our [Audio Gap] rates in a few countries to far lower levels than before, thereby encouraging more customers to start using data without any fear of balanced depletion shock. The good work put in by our teams has helped us to achieve commensurate results [Audio Gap] take you through each of these. I will first touch upon the highlights before going into the details. The last quarter witnessed good growth with our revenue at $1,034 million, $1.034 billion. Year-on-year, constant currency growth of almost 22.8%, which, with continued improvement in our operating efficiency, led to an even stronger growth of 28.3% EBITDA margin to $485 million. Please note, the reported revenue this quarter included a onetime exceptional benefit of $20 million, which we have excluded from all our analysis of underlying trends in revenue for the business. As discussed many times before, our data and mobile money continue to be our growth drivers, together contributing now about 40% of our revenues in the quarter. And these have been growing very, very handsomely and continue to drive our revenues. Continuing to focus on increasing customer penetration, we have added 2.5 million customers this quarter, 11% growth year-on-year. This has been partly hindered by the halting of new customer onboarding in Nigeria from mid-December, in line with the customer registration guidance. However, due to increased calling, especially due to restrictions on movement and end-of-year festive season, we have seen a 17.1% increase in minutes per customer. Now customers are calling. [Audio Gap] 241 minutes a month, up from 206 minutes a year ago. This has helped us drive a voice ARPU increase by 4%, taking the overall voice revenue to a 16.9% growth. This reinforces our [Audio Gap] that due to the low customer penetration and low usage of minutes per customer per month, there is still a long runway for voice revenues to grow in Africa. The overall smartphone [Audio Gap] especially high-end phone shipments into our countries have been affected by the indifferent economic situation and the disruption of supply chains. However, as we have corrected the data rack rates to avoid balanced shocks, we have seen a consistent growth [Audio Gap] in a customer growth at 23.5%. However, because of a lot more lower-end customers and a fewer higher end, we've been -- our ARPU growth per customer on data has only grown up by 1.5%, slightly [Audio Gap] data revenues to 27%. There has been a further acceleration of mobile money with Q3 revenue growth at 41% year-on-year. This comes on the back of a 62% transaction value growth and was driven by a customer base growth of 29% and an ARPU growth of almost 10% in mobile money. Nigeria continues to grow revenue well at 24.1% year-on-year for the quarter. East Africa has an acceleration of growth over the last few quarters and has grown at 26% in quarter 3. With the new 4G networks rollout, Francophone Africa has emerged into growth mode in a big way with a revenue growth of 15%. As mentioned, the good revenue growth led to increased flow-through to help EBITDA margins in Q3 up to 46.9%, a jump of 200% -- 200 basis points over last year. Foreign exchange situation had an adverse impact of $41 million on constant currency revenue and $21 million on underlying EBITDA for the quarter, largely driven by devaluation of Nigerian naira, Zambian kwacha and Kenyan shilling, partly offset by an appreciation of the Central African franc. Briefly in terms of balance sheet and cash flow. At the end of December, our leverage ratio was 2.1x the net debt at $3.5 billion. And in Q3, we [Audio Gap] a free cash flow of $146 million, $32 million less than Q3 last year, largely due to spending of about $38 million more on CapEx and an increase of $22 million in cash tax as a result of higher operating profit. There are a few strategic and operational announcements I should mention. We were issued with a new operating license in Uganda in December, which takes effect from the new licensing regime from July 1, 2020. And just yesterday, we have also announced a 10-year extension of our license with 900 and 1800 spectrum payments done in Nigeria. We have acquired additional spectrum rights during the quarter in a few of our OPCOs. We have announced appointment of Kelly Bayer Rosmarin on October 27 as a non-executive director, replacing Arthur Lang, who stepped down at the same time. New SIM registration rules came into effect in Nigeria in mid-December, which I touched upon earlier. We are working closely with the government to ensure that all our subscribers provide their valid national identity numbers to update their SIM registration records. New customer acquisitions are currently barred until significant [Audio Gap] made on this. The deadline for registrations has moved, reflecting some of the logistical challenges involved and is currently 9th February 2021. We have already made significant progress capturing national identity numbers and building our database in collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission. So far out of Airtel Nigeria's 44.4 million customers, we have collected national identification numbers for 21 million. That's 47% of our base. To finish the registration process, we must verify this national identification number we have with the National Identity Management Commission's database. This requires improved connectivity with the NIMC database, which is currently being developed for all Nigerian mobile operators. We have also opened enrollment centers in collaboration with National Identity Management Commission to help consumers obtain the national identification numbers where they do not have one. We will continue to work closely with the government to ensure full compliance, and while we anticipated this will affect customer growth in Nigeria [Audio Gap] in Q4 '21. However, the operation -- overall potential impact remains uncertain. As communicated in the past, we continue to look at asset modernization and investment opportunities for the group. We're actually pursuing -- we are actively pursuing a sale of the remaining owned tower sites sitting across a few of our operating countries, and we continue to look at other strategic opportunities, including and among others, the possibility of attracting minority investments into our Airtel Money business. Finally, in terms of outlook, while the COVID-19 pandemic has had a more limited impact on our most recent quarter, we remain vigilant about recent [Audio Gap] around new strains of the virus and any further actions that may be required by governments in order to minimize the contagion in our countries of operation. Fundamentally, the opportunities for sustainable profitable growth from our [Audio Gap] markets for mobile voice, data and mobile money services remain hugely attractive, and we are confident of continuing to deliver on our growth strategy. And with that, I would now like to open the line for questions [Audio Gap] join as mentioned before by Jaideep Paul and Pier. Operator, I now hand over to you to please open and manage the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Jonathan Kennedy-Good of JPMorgan.

Congrats on the numbers. Just a couple of follow-ups on Nigeria. Can you give us some color on how the impact of the SIM card sales ban is impacting the base at the moment? What kind of -- we've had 6 weeks since this was implemented. So just trying to understand whether there is a bleed from the existing subscriber base. And then also, with regard to the next deadline, if you don't register all of the SIM cards, are you -- is there clarity on whether you have to block those SIM cards that aren't registered? And is there any financial penalty for doing so?

Thank you. So let me first address this. So what happens when we stop? And this is not the first time we are seeing what we are seeing in Nigeria. 1.5 years back, we went through this in Uganda, where we had blocked gross -- new customer additions for 1 year and were to reverify the base. We have done reverification of base in multiple other countries before. Whenever we stop new acquisitions, the first thing that happens is gross ads become 0. However, the churn in prepaid is quite high at 4.5-odd percent, that comes down dramatically, and we are seeing that happening. The churn of existing base has come down a lot. Customers are very, very keen to hold their numbers and churns have come down. Second question that happens is, who is having a NIM number and who are the people who do not have a NIM number? Broadly, if you see, the 50% of our customers, the top 50%, give more than 90% of our revenue. It's a very high skewed revenue versus customer base mix. If you see that, the higher end of our customers normally have a higher probability of having a NIM number, while the lower end may not have. So even if we start collating [Audio Gap] and the small minority get cut off at any point of time, and that happens in any of our countries, including Tanzania, which is going through now, we do not see a dramatic revenue impact. We will continue to work with the government to comply with the law. We will be 100% compliant. If at any point, whether we will complete by February 9, we will never complete 100%. And that's for sure. Even if you extend by 1 more year, we will never do 100 -- there will always be a tail that will be niggling and a problem. But whenever we will -- if we do not complete and if there are logistical differences, we will appeal to the authorities for perhaps extending. Otherwise, we will follow the law if we have to cut them off. But we're strictly compliant, and I do not think we will do anything to attract any penalties consciously. Thank you.

So just a follow-up. So going into the fourth quarter, we can assume that revenue growth in Nigeria is still positive, if I read your remarks correctly?

I can't forecast it, but past experience with many other countries, we have been able to hold the growth. I don't know how Nigeria will plan out, but in the past, we've had this experience.

The next question is from John Kim of UBS.

Just to follow on the Nigeria theme, I did want to ask some detailed questions there. My understanding is that you didn't -- you weren't required to register the presence of a national ID under the old KYC. So if February 9 rolls around, do you know who to disconnect or is it not really true beyond the 21 million that you've registered? And you kind of touched on this exposure into the service revenue. I just wanted to verify those stats again. What I heard was 50% of the base generates over 90% of the service revenue, if I heard you correctly. Last question, CapEx. How constrained were you in the quarter? And can you give us some sense of plans for Q4?

So first, let me assure this, we have collected till now, and we have -- from February 9, 21 million NIM numbers against our customer IDs because we took these numbers from the customer. As I told you before, we have to still verify it with the customer base, the national NIMC base we have. So we will do this. And I'm sure we will continue to collect during this period. We are also working towards helping, and the government is doing all to get more and more customers want to register. Sometimes I read us to step back, and I always tell this. As much as we are desperate to keep our customers, our customers are also very keen to keep our mobile networks. If one of our mobile networks gets cut off for some reason, we will go and make sure it comes up. So there are a lot of our customers who are trying to go and ensure they are also compliant, and people are very responsible in this, and I have full confidence in they coming up to ensure this compliance. We will do all we can in the right processes. A typical 50%, 90% is a typical mix of ABC Pareto equation. [Audio Gap] and it works quite similar across many countries. As of now, I cannot say which customer has it, what revenue they have, but we have a long way to go to February 9. And normally, a lot of this pickup can happen between now and February 9. The next question that you asked me was on CapEx. Sorry?

Go ahead.

On CapEx. Our intention, in spite of COVID for the whole of the first 9 months of this year, is to continue to spend our CapEx. [Audio Gap] plan was about $650 million to $700 million of CapEx to be spent. We are working towards it. However, we did face a lot of logistical problems. Some of our staff could not travel into the markets for rolling out new sites during the lockdown period, some of the [Audio Gap] gone into a lot more lock jam and logistical and -- difficulties. Supply chains have got impacted. So we may be marginally lower by about $25-odd million. We are looking at the range of about $625 million for the quarter -- for the year, sorry, beg your pardon.

Last question on Nigeria. PSB, any progress there?

We are still waiting as I've told. [Audio Gap] given our application, we have made our payments, and we are waiting for the response from the government. As of now, no response or nothing to report.

The next question is from Dilya Ibragimova of Citi.

I had one follow-up question on NIM registration, please. You mentioned that there are logistical issues there. And I just wanted to check, if you will, maybe you could give us a bit more details. Out of 21 million customers that have NIM, how many of those have been verified? And maybe you could give a bit of color on how big the backlog is. So I understand that it takes a bit of time to actually verify against the database. And also, what is the backlog of those who have registered to actually put the detail through NIMC as well? So that's question number one. And number two is on fiber investments. Maybe you could give a bit more insight what type of fiber are you planning to roll out? Is it where the focus is? Is it fiber to the base stations or is it fiber to the home or a mix of different? If you could give some insight what exactly you would weigh in there? And maybe is it the projects that you could potentially monetize or bring strategic investor as -- just as you plan for mobile money?

Excellent. Firstly, on NIM, we have collected the 21 million names, but we have not been -- the logistical difficulty has been the connectivity difficulties we've had with the NIMC and across all operators in Nigeria. So as of now, we are waiting for that connectivity to stabilize before we can do any verification. So the verification part is still pending, as I mentioned. The second thing coming on fiber investments. We have invested 10-more thousand kilometers of fiber. [Audio Gap] say fiber, we look at both build, co-build with someone else, dark fiber IRUs and very high capacity IRUs. We have almost now 50,000 kilometers of this fiber. Where are we investing this fiber? There are multiple places. The fiber that I'm talking about, the 10,000, is not the home connectivity fiber. We are only working on the wireless home broadband consciously at this time. What we are doing is doing intra -- Africa is a huge continent. Some of the countries and towns are very far off. [Audio Gap] to load 4G on a town, which is a little distance, you need to build at least fiber into that town. So there's a lot of inter-city fiber and also fiber connecting to the base stations inside cities wherever high capacity is required. So most of our fiber is going into areas. Thank you.

Okay. And sorry, if I may follow-up on the NIM registration verification, please. Does that -- do I understand that correctly that the backlog is pretty significant? And do you -- is it something you could comment whether you get a sense that the deadline could be rolled? I mean is there a risk that the country will -- or the population would not have any service if you were to disconnect most of the subscribers just because verification takes time and putting registration -- the registration data through?

That would be presumptuous on my part to guess that. But I'm sure, once the connectivity establishes, we should be able to do most of them. If we are unable -- sorry, verify most of them. And if there is any difficulty in verification, I'm sure we will consult and discuss with the authorities and do what is needed. All of us are keen that we have to be compliant with the law, we have to take care of our customers. So I'm sure the right solution will come out. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Sunil Rajgopal of HSBC.

Can you comment a bit about the market developments in Tanzania and Kenya, I mean what competitive environment are you seeing? And are you able to garner more market share given that your offerings are much more cheaper versus the competition? And secondly, can you also comment about the regulatory developments ongoing in Kenya with anything with regarding to curtailing [indiscernible]?

Okay. Firstly, the second question, there is no change or any new information on that. Coming to the first question on Kenya and Tanzania. So let me put this down. Out of our 14 countries, if you see the top countries, Nigeria, DRC, Tanzania and Kenya, the largest population countries. Our countries, we have a relatively lower share than many other countries in our portfolio. These are countries where we are both investing aggressively on the network, also competing very hard on the ground in terms of this. We -- needless to say, we are gaining a reasonable amount of good revenue growth. Overall, East Africa has grown by 26%, and these countries are also doing a reasonably good job. I would not go into country-wise numbers at this stage, please. Thank you.

The next question is from Faisal Azmeh of Goldman Sachs.

Just a question on Capex, if this wasn't asked before. Just how do you think about CapEx levels now? Are you kind of satisfied with the levels that you've achieved so far? Do we expect any upside risk from here, particularly into next year? Any color on that would be quite helpful. And in terms of cost of finance, how is the refinancing process going in terms of what we should expect for the coming year? That would be quite helpful.

Jaideep, will you please take these questions? Thank you.

Yes. Sure, thanks. With reference to the first -- second question on the refinancing part. As you have seen from our financials that we have quite a strong financial position with a free cash flow increased almost 20%, EBITDA margin continued to improve, the leverage has come down. With all these key indicators and with $800 million of committed undrawn facilities, we are pretty confident that we'll be able to meet all our financials. However, we also are looking at different options to see that how the debt financing will happen when it is [Audio Gap] in May '21 and we will -- sorry, this May '21. And in appropriate time, we'll come back to the market with the relevant disclosure when we finalize that option. But as of now, we are pretty comfortable in terms of our overall financial situation facilities which we have. On CapEx, your first question, this year, CapEx, as Raghu mentioned in the earlier question that we will be looking at between $625 million, $630 million, which is slightly lower than what we expected for the full year as mentioned in the previous quarters. And that's purely because of some of the lockdown-related problem which we encountered in the supply chain area, especially on the custom clearance, the ports are not as efficient as earlier. So that's where we are facing little difficulty, and that's what it looks like that it will be around $625 million, $630 million for the full year. For next year, I think the appropriate time we'll be able to give this guidance is next when we go for the full year. By that time, we will finalize next year plan. But broadly, we don't expect any significant higher CapEx as compared to the last year, what we have given as a guidance, which is $650 million to $700 million. We don't expect it to go beyond that, but it will remain within that. And our focus on investment continues as in the past. Thank you.

The next question is from Olaoluwa Bobade of ARM Pension Managers.

I just have one question. Are you looking to reduce your finance cost anytime soon? Are you comfortable with the levels -- current levels? And are there plans to improve this? I think the key concern is -- an overarching question is, how should we be looking [Audio Gap] in your ROE? Is this a way to compare you to some of your peers?

Pier, would you like to step in?

Sure. Sorry, you were breaking up a little bit, but I understood the finance costs. So we're comfortable with our finance -- our effective cost of debt, which at the moment is around 4.8%, keep in mind that one of our strategic intents that we have always mentioned is to try to localize more of that debt into our OPCOs in local currency to have a better natural hedge against foreign currency movements. So maybe in the long term, you should see a slightly uptick in that cost of debt. But that will be counterbalanced by lower foreign currency exposure and adding less foreign currency liability. So that's the strategic intent. And overall, the 2 should balance it out. That's on finance costs. On -- I didn't understand the second part of the question because your line was breaking up.

Yes. I just -- I think [Audio Gap] the second part was really just -- are you looking -- are you happy with your return of equity at the moment? And are there ways how you can improve that, both from the cost and revenue point of view?

Jaideep, do you want to talk about the return on equity?

Yes, absolutely. So it's a very difficult question to answer because we can never be happy with the return on equity. Our ambition and aspiration will be always to improve it, and that's what we will be aiming at. But current return on equity is not bad, but that doesn't mean that we will not be aspiring for higher return on equity. Coming into it, what will we do? We will continue to grow our revenues, our EBITDA margins, better EBITDA flow-throughs, keep our overall cost down and pulled all other costs down in order to improve our return. And I think you've been seeing that trend happening over the last couple of years, and we do hope to sustain it. Sorry, just to add to that question. If you see the last 5-quarter trend, the return on equity is moving. And in fact, I see that 8.1% has moved up to 11% today. So obviously, return on equity post-tax is improving every quarter and that's something which is, I think, is the aspiration that we keep on improving on that.

The next question is from Tajudeen Ibrahim of Chapel Hill Denham.

And I have like 1 or 2 questions. The first is around the CapEx guidance that you gave, which is about $645 million. I hope I'm right. Can you give us a bit of a sense around the split on a region basis? Like Nigeria, East Africa and Francophone, where would be your major focus in terms of CapEx? That's the first one. The second is on Nigeria. You said about 71 million NIMs have been connected for now, but there's a bit of a challenge around verification. Are you willing to shed a good model around that verification? Where is the delay coming from? Is it from the part of the NIMC? And what is management doing to address this for you to get successful as soon as possible? I would like you to respond to those 2 for now.

Jaideep, will you take the first one?

Sorry, I -- the line was breaking. I could not hear the first one.

I think the second question was on -- the first question was on the CapEx. How much are we spending? And how -- what is the region-wise split?

I would say the ratio will be about 40-40-20, broadly. So 40% -- Nigeria 40%; 35%, 40% in East Africa; and 20% in Francophone Africa. Currently, that is the split. However, keep in mind that last year it was different. Last year, Francophone Africa had a larger share, and Nigeria, of course, continued to grow. So there is a balancing and rebalancing always happens based on the need and the market potential.

So Ibrahim, let me come to give you the flavor. The way we have always looked at our CapEx is we've not done all countries equal allocation or a logical or a standard mathematical formula allocation to every country. The theme is when we started this whole journey of our modernization of our networks, we started spending first in Nigeria and East African countries where we had rest of our cost structure right. Then we moved a little later into Francos as we started building fiber and backhaul capacities. Even now, we are challenged in some of the Saharan countries where Deep Saharan desserts, our fiber connectivity is weak and backhauls are low. So it is -- we have a dynamically changing. We look at it as an overall portfolio and move it. So the [Audio Gap] is between countries will keep dramatically changing depending on the requirement. We don't look at it very much that every country has to get a certain allocation. As part of the NIM collection, I think it's a joint connectivity between the operators and NIMC. And together, we are working towards resolving it very quickly. Thank you.

Okay. If I may just ask a final question. It is around the temporary suspension of the sale of new SIM cards in Nigeria. And I know that most have resulted to some sort of loss of revenue for all the operators in the market. But I sense that you are making a lot of progress and that is commendable on your data revenue and particularly considering your strong 4G connectivity. So would you say that data could support your revenue in place of the suspension of new SIM cards being sold? And if data cannot completely fill that gap, would you be able to disclose to us some certain percentage data can fill in that regard? I think it is crucial.

Thank you. So if you had seen our results for quarter 3 results, voice also has grown very handsomely in Nigeria. So we have seen growth across all -- both legs, voice and data, have grown very handsomely. So we will continue to see this. I will not be able to add much color on what will compensate for what and new customers. Obviously, as the new customer acquisition has come down so has our churn now. I will leave it here and unable to answer any more color on that. Thank you.

The next question is a follow-up from Jonathan Kennedy-Good.

I'd just like to follow-up on some of your comments regarding potential asset sales on the tower side. Could you give us color as to how many towers will potentially be sold? And where they would be focused? I presume, still Tanzania? And then finally, on tax, how should we expect the effective tax rate to evolve over the next, say, 2 to 3 years?

Jaideep, will you take these questions, please?

Yes, yes, yes. So on your first question on tower sell, as you know that we have 5 OPCOs, roughly about -- roughly nearing 4,000 towers, Tanzania being the largest, and then we have 4 other countries, which is Gabon, Chad, Madagascar and Malawi. So we are in discussion with various towercos in these 5 countries. And we have -- I would say that in appropriate time, we'll come back with the final numbers. But currently, the decision and the negotiations are going on. That's number one. Number two, on tax, I would say that the -- if you see our effective tax rate for the 9 months, it was 42.8%. And actually, if you look at the full year projected will be about 43%. And the -- so next year also, there can be a very similar range of EPR, because as you know that I've explained this in the past that the way [Audio Gap] that, our basic corporate tax rate is actually 33%. But because of the profit mix between various countries and some of the countries are at a taxable profit level are actually loss-making [Audio Gap] the mix changes, and it's -- because of that, the effective tax rate is much higher than 33%, 34%. But the way currently it is positioned, I don't expect it significantly over and above 42%, 43%. It will be in the same range for at least next, I would say, 18 to 24 months.

The next question is also a follow-up from John Kim.

I just want to make sure we're very clear on the national ID process. You need to verify your subscribers, then the national ID database needs to verify those same subscribers, and then and only then they don't get cut off around February 9. Is that right?

Okay. So we don't -- we collect the national identity number for every customer, and then once we have got the 21 million, we will go and match it against the national -- NIMC database. And after that, if that matches, then we will not be cutting them off. You're right.

And that's your call in your system or is that the government's?

No, no. We will have to knock off the customers, and we will follow the government guidelines on this.

Okay. Okay. And are you able to register national ID similar to MTN?

Sorry?

At your service centers, are you able -- or are there personnel to register people for national IDs? So if I walk into a major Airtel Africa -- Airtel Nigeria service center, can I get a national id there if I have the documentation?

We have started collaborating with some agencies and, in quite a few locations, started collecting -- providing and helping them get national identity numbers.

The next question is from Alastair Jones of New Street Research.

Just a quick question on -- just with your dividends in Nigeria. I mean, any sort of visibility on the ability to repatriate any cash out of Nigeria. I don't know if you've had any developments there, but anything you can comment would be great. The other thing I saw, which is pretty encouraging, I know the Francophone assets have been struggling in the past. And I think last quarter, you had about 6% growth, fiscal year 15% growth, which is a pretty stellar turnaround. So just trying to get a bit of clarity as to what you think has worked well there. What's sort of -- what's changed that's allowed this growth to go -- to accelerate? And can it be sustained?

Let me address the second question and then I'll request Jaideep to do the first one. So what has happened in Francophone Africa? Firstly, as I told you, we have delayed our investments in 4G longer -- later than we have done in other places. Once 4G networks have started being built, our activity on data growth has started improving in each of these countries. So data has been a big driver for this increased growth. Along with our standard growth, voice has grown everywhere, data has started growing further and our distribution and rural reach has helped us both even grow on mobile. But data has been a big driver and a strong brand preference for our customers to come on to this. So [Audio Gap] and it's a very big jump. It was quite -- we were able to understand why it's happening, and we have consistently seen this growth. I recollect about a year back, we were at negative growth on this minus 2%. Then we moved from minus 4% to minus 2% to plus 2% to 8% and now 15%. So I'm very confident we will -- we are doing a good job there. Our teams are doing a great job. Jaideep, on the repatriation in Nigeria.

Yes. So not much to talk about repatriation. Situation remained more or less same like last quarter. As mentioned earlier that till about March last year, we had no issue of upstreaming cash from Nigeria. Since March, the liquidity has tightened as a result of impact on low oil price. And it's too early to say how long this liquidity tightening will last, but our past experience suggests that these are temporary for a few quarters. However, we're pretty hopeful that with the crude price stabilizing at around $50 and the forex reserve -- in-country forex reserve is also improving. We expect the foreign currency availability stabilizing in the coming quarters. Beyond this, I don't have any further update at this moment.

Yes, that's helpful. And then just if I can just take on another final question from me. Just in terms of Nigeria, your OpEx, operating costs or inflation on your OpEx seems to have accelerated. I think you mentioned in the quarter, there seems to be a bit of a ramp-up in terms of 4G rollout or fiber rollout. We have seen sort of steady increase in inflation in Nigeria. Are you still -- aside from the obvious rollout that you're undertaking, have you seen any signs of inflationary pressure on your cost base coming through? Does that worry you at all?

Yes, a little bit there because a little part, about 9% of our OpEx, 8%, 9%, are dollar-denominated because there are certain OpEx which are dollar-denominated. So whenever there is a devaluation happens, obviously, [Audio Gap] pressure. Inflation and devaluation both have an impact. But good part is we have been able to bring down Nigeria forex exposure in OpEx significantly from somewhere around 19%, 20%, 2 years, 2, 3 years back to now less than 10%. It is around 8%, 9%, and we are continuously working on that. So that if we can further bring it down, the exposure will further go down. But yes, currently, we have a little bit issue where the OpEx goes up because of the devaluation and inflation wherever it is specifically it is dollar contract.

I just want to add one point. Even if you see the EBITDA margins of Nigeria not going up over the last quarter, you have to still understand that we are -- firstly, we are investing very heavily in Nigeria. We have continued to do rapid investments in our network rollouts. And you should also realize that the EBITDA flow-through is still well above 50% for incremental revenues. That's why there's a very marginal drop, which I would not worry too much about.

The next question is from Natalya Zabrodina of Emerging Markets Investment Managers (sic) [ Management ].

One question to the management. Well, I just wanted to find out what are your plans about Airtel Zambia listing? Okay. So it seems to be like since the Airtel was listed as a group, the local Zambia listing became absolutely liquid. So there's any point to keep it listed or you plan to delist it?

As per the government -- Jaideep, it's about Airtel Zambia, are we planning to keep it listed? So we are supposed to list 20%. We have about 3.2% listed. The market is not able to absorb much more. So we have put it in an escrow account with the stock market. So as and when there is a more granularity in the capital market, there will be -- these shares should go in for placement. But otherwise, we will continue to adhere to the norms that have been set by the government. Thank you.

So you just say just your plan to keep the listing as it is, right? And it's on the list at 3.5%? But the requirement should be like around 25%, right?

Yes. So we have attempted to -- we are very open to listing in countries, but the question is we have to do it carefully and slowly so as there is commensurate liquidity in the market to absorb these large market caps. So I think Zambia, we are currently listed. If we get demand in, we will put. The balance of 25% minus the 3.2% has been kept in an escrow account. Thank you.

So what's the rationale just to keep it listed? Can I just find out that?

I beg you?

Yes, I can come in, Raghu. So the requirement is as per the telecom license, and this is a requirement of the license condition, and that's what [Audio Gap] and whenever we tried in the past various road shows and all our effort, and we involved the stock exchange and the regulator in those so that we are absolutely transparent on our efforts, we made several effort in the past. And we continue to make this effort so that we are fully compliant. But just as Raghu mentioned that we kept this balance of the shares in escrow account, so that whenever there is any offtake of that, we'll be [ selling ] those shares to the investors.

But this is a compliance requirement, and we will continue to comply with that.

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from Myuran Rajaratnam of MIBFA.

I've got a couple. I mean, the first one is, you said you are aggressively rolling out your network in the various geographies and you talked about your fiber earlier. I just want to confirm it. It's 50,000 kilometers in total. But if you had to loosely break it down between Nigeria, Francophone and East Africa, what sort of ratios will it be? I've got a couple of more additional questions.

You can ask the second question. Just give me a minute. I'm just collating that information for you. But you can go ahead with the second question.

Sure. The second one is in Nigeria. The rollout for mobile money requires agents on the ground. Do you have a number of -- you can disclose to us, the number of registered mobile money agents on the ground in Nigeria that you have? That's my second question. And in the third question, also in Nigeria, I noticed that your growth is accelerating in Q3, if I read the numbers correctly, year-on-year comparison, but the growth is coming relatively more. I mean you can't really complain. I mean they're all very good growth rates between voice and data. But are you seeing any difference in the customer behavior? Why voice is growing more than data? Literally speaking, from the past, is it just a COVID-related thing? Or just some insights, if you have any, I mean. It's quite a difficult question. I appreciate that.

Thank you very much. It's a little convoluted to answer this. There are a few things that we have to note. Firstly, as we are building rural networks and growing networks, there are a lot more people in the rural and deep rural markets who are benefiting from these networks. When I first joined telecom 18 years back, someone told me you urban guys, you think you are the guys -- key customers of mobile networks, but actually it's the rural people who desperately need it because the alternative for them is to travel longer distances. We could still go to [Audio Gap] house or some friend's house in a city much easier. So the people, they're required. What have we done? Along with growing the networks, we have also -- one is COVID, surely, would have helped us, but we've also improved our distribution into rural networks and markets much better and making it both network and rechargers and customer acquisition available in rural. Our distribution cum sales coordinatedly driving this has helped us grow our assumption. Also, people have started [Audio Gap] per minute. We have grown 17% customers -- more customer usage with a 4% ARPU, that means we've taken a 11% to 12% price drop on minutes also. So my -- voice is growing. And I've always said, voice will grow in Africa. Africa is V plus D plus M, I call it voice plus data plus money. All 3 will grow because the unique customer penetration is still sub-50% of voice on 2G. As regards the money agents, we do not have an access service bank license as yet in Nigeria. However, we have an access bank tie up with which we do, but we have agencies that are on that access bank. But on payment service bank, we do not have a license yet, and we will talk about agents and other information at that point. I'll hand over to Jaideep, if he can -- want to add some color on that.

Yes. So the breakup of [Audio Gap] as follows. Nigeria, roughly about 15,000 kilometers; East Africa, all countries put together 25,000 kilometers; and Francophone Africa, about 10,000 kilometers. So that's the breakup.

So we have no further questions in the queue. Do you have any closing comments?

I'd like to thank you all for joining this call and look forward to speaking to you again at the time of our full year results in early May. Thank you very much, and good day, and keep -- stay safe.

Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that then concludes this conference. You may now disconnect your lines.