MTN Group Limited (MTN.JO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon to everybody. My name is Thato Motlanthe, and I look after Investor Relations for the MTN Group. And it's my privilege and my pleasure today to invite you and welcome you to the presentation of our interim results for the period ended 30 June 2025. A very warm welcome to everyone who's joined us, all the guests that have joined us at the MTN Innovation Center, and that includes people from the capital markets, people from the media and of course, the MTNers across our markets and across the continent. We're also on the usual platforms that we broadcast on. So today, we are broadcasting live on our YouTube channel, LinkedIn channel, CNBC Africa, BusinessDay TV, and we welcome you all on the online channels as well. So just as we get into the presentation, we usually start with the usual housekeeping. And you'll see on the screen that you've got the disclaimer and safe harbor slide. And that really just covers the presentation from that perspective. In terms of health and safety, just to remind you, we've got an emergency exit to my right and one to the back of the auditorium. And then if you just get out your phones and your devices, you'll see that you've got the social media details on the screen. Our hashtag for the presentation is MTN Interims '25 and our social media handles are @MTNGroup. You'll see on the slide that you now have the QR codes for WiFi access, and you can use your devices now, and that should linger a little bit on the screen to snap and get online. The best part for those who are in the auditorium today, the refreshments are available after the presentation. They'll be presented to you after the presentation in the usual place outside of the auditorium. So as we just move on to the business of the day, I think as we gather to reflect on our results, it's worth kind of looking back and thinking where -- and talk about where we've come from. So over the past 3 decades, I think MTN has grown to serve close to 300 million subscribers, and that's across 16 markets. So for my colleagues and I, that kind of scale represents purpose. So a purpose that says we want to keep people connected. We want to keep services as affordable as possible. And basically, we're helping to drive the growth of the economies and the markets that we serve in. So today -- as we go through today's announcement, I think we reflect upon that and the challenges that we've seen in the first half. It affects many businesses, including MTN, but I think we've been able to demonstrate once again the resilience of this business. As we continue in terms of our presentation, you'll see the resilience of the business, the sustained momentum of our business performance and obviously, the clear sense of purpose with which we execute on what we do on a daily basis. So this is how we're positioning the business. And you'll see from the announcements that we did today, we're positioning the business for sustained growth going forward. And Ralph and Tsholo will talk you through how we think about these issues. So with that, let me just get into today's agenda, and it will be the usual, Ralph Mupita, our Group President and CEO, will come up on to the stage and cover some highlights as well as the operational and strategic review. Tsholo Molefe, our Group CFO, will then come up and do a financial review, and then Ralph will come back and give us some thoughts on how we think about the outlook and our prospects. In terms of the admin for the day, you will be -- if you're on the webcast and you're asking questions, please use that platform to ask questions, which will facilitate in terms of the Q&A after the presentation. So we thank you once again for joining us for this presentation. And I think without further ado, let me welcome Ralph to the stage, our Group President and CEO. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Thato. You said the highlights will be drinks after the presentation. I thought it'd be Tsholo and myself. So thanks very much for all of you who've joined us here at 14th Avenue and to our shareholders and stakeholders more broadly, who joined us on the virtual platforms. We trust that you've had the opportunity to look at our SENS that we released this morning, two separate documents, one detailing the financial performance of the company and the operational and other matters. And the second, taking a view on strategy, the context of our strategy and how we're beginning to think beyond 2025, and I'll touch on some of those elements. So we trust that you started to digest all of that information and the presentation that Tsholo and I will make in the next 45 minutes or so, we'll give you more color into how we saw the performance. I'd like to, first of all, thank the MTNers, 17,000 across 16 markets who've been hard at work over the last 6 or so months in a very challenging macro. I think all of us know that we are operating in very uncertain and volatile kind of geopolitical context, and that has a second order effects into the markets that we operate in. And without those 17,000 MTNers, I don't think we would have had these set of results, a pretty clean set of financial results that Tsholo will share, and we're very pleased with the progress that the company has made in the 6 months to the end of June. We see five key messages in terms of where the business is. And starting off with the point that we had a very robust performance in the first half. Good commercial execution across our markets, a disciplined approach to allocating capital. We allocated just under ZAR 21 billion equivalent of CapEx across our markets, pushing quite a lot in Nigeria. So that pushed our CapEx intensity closer to 19%, so slightly above our range of 15% to 18%, but it was intentional in the context of Nigeria as we had tariff increases, which we then promised to the authorities that we will do a lot of work improving the quality of experience to balance the tariff increases that we would have benefited from. Ghana also the number of the ZAR 21 billion is buoyed a little bit by currency appreciation, something we hardly talk about in emerging markets appreciation. So that's what's been behind the CapEx profile, which Tsholo will talk to. We've had a very stable macro actually in the period. In Nigeria, the naira was pretty much in the 1,500 odds. Inflation is coming down. In Ghana, you saw that we had strengthening of the currency. The Cedi was more 15 to the dollar. Now it's 10 and so, and the rand pretty behaved. So the operational execution quality that is always in the business is now being highlighted by a macro that is actually more conducive and more supportive and hence, the robust H1 set of results. So looking at the top line, and Tsholo will take us into more detail, very strong top line growth that we achieved, 22% medium-term guidance up until the upgrade that we've given now, kind of think of it as 15%. So quite a bit of headroom above our usual guidance. Fintech, we're pleased that the ecosystem continues to expand, and we're seeing good traction and progress around the structural separations, more work to be done in the second half. And then on Nigeria, again, we had a 5-point plan that we committed to stakeholders that would execute after the challenges of Q1 of last year. We said there are five priorities. We can't control the macro, but we are going to be very disciplined in terms of working through [indiscernible] the broader team as well as the Board of Nigeria for staying focused on the execution, I think we're seeing the progress on current assumptions about macro and how we're seeing the performance of the business as we exit Q3, we think we're going to get back, close the negative equity position helps us build out the distributable reserves. Those distributable reserves allow us to pay dividends. So the dividend paying capacity for Nigeria has been brought forward to what we had said to you in Q1. And the final point is that we have enhanced the guidance. At the group level, we have increased the top line. South Africa, we've made the guidance a bit wider to deal with the competitive issues that we're seeing, particularly in the prepaid, and I'll explain that a little later. So we will cover the financials and maybe just to pick on some of the selling points. The growth obviously has been powered by the two structural growth trends that we see in the business, data and fintech. And the data revenue was very strong. Part of it obviously supported by the growth that we've seen from Nigeria, which had a service revenue growth of 54%. And so a very strong growth, both in data and in fintech. On the earnings side, pleasing to see the kind of earnings trajectory bounce back. Adjusted headline earnings at ZAR 6.57, really good growth that is kind of bring us back to where we think we should be post the challenges of last year. The balance sheet continues to be very resilient, and it's supported by the capital allocation framework that we have, and Tsholo will take us into the detail of that. And then on the returns, pleasing to see the operating free cash flow again grow back. I think we're very encouraged, lots of work done also around working capital from Tsholo and the team and the finance teams really appreciate all the work. So a very pleasing set of results that I'll ask Tsholo to talk to you a little bit later. So let's just get into the operations. Firstly, South Africa. I think South Africa at the macro level, I think there's not too much to say that growth remains sluggish across South Africa. I think we all aspire for growth to be at least 3%. When you sit in the business BLSA type forums is what is it that will get us to growth that is labor absorbing and the right levels of growth. So we've still very muted growth. The currencies have been pretty stable. Inflation is very low. The key standout feature for us is the competitive intensity. Both ourselves, Telkom, Vodacom, I think going at it in terms of the prepaid market. And as we had signaled at the beginning of the year that we're going to have a fairly tough Q1 and Q2 in South Africa from our perspective. Charles and team have been taking on a bit more aggressive approach towards that competitive context and hence, the logic of what you'll see in terms of the guidance that we've put out. So the activities have all been fashioned around price optimization. We're looking at device strategies, partnering around devices because the key thing is we ultimately want a data-capable handset in the hands of every single South African. We ideally want to be able to switch off 2G networks due course, because the CapEx we're investing is to support data traffic and data monetization. And in the period, we deployed ZAR 3.2 billion of CapEx and the network resilience and the quality remains super strong. Service revenue at 2.3%. Inside that 2.3%, I think you'll see a print of 4.3% for data. Data in Q2 was actually better than the overall for H1. It was about 4.8%, if my memory is correct. I think that's correct, 4.8%. So seeing some momentum in data, both for prepaid and postpaid. And the initiatives that we spoke to you about that we'll take on kind of regionalization of offers, looking at the various regions. We spoke to you about where we're seeing competitive intensity per region. That work is ongoing. But for the half, we saw 2.3% and this was pretty much in line of what we had expected. Nigeria. Nigeria have already released the results and much of what I have on the slide, you'd all appreciate the macro context that I set out, a much more benign macro. Liquidity is there. If you want the dollars, willing buyer, willing seller, it's available at NGN 1,500-odd. And we're seeing inflation pressures really easing. The MPC, the policy is very clear, very clear communication from the CBN. I think it's bringing a lot of confidence into that market. Standout feature from a regulatory perspective has really been around the SIM registration around third-party agents and Karl and Modupe cover that. Key activities has been implementing the 50% tariff increases. As we said, at the end of Q1 that the benefits of the tariff increases we should start seeing into Q2, and that came in, in the way that we've seen the service revenue growth at 54%. We also, from a margin perspective, benefited from the renegotiation of the IHS and ATC tower deals last year. So we're now benefiting from those. And some of those discounts that we discussed are beginning to flow through and will support the enhanced guidance that was communicated where we're now seeing EBITDA margins of at least 50% plus for the year. And looking broader than this year, medium term, you start to see that the margins between the 50% to 53% reestablishing the EBITDA guidance that we had before the challenging macro conditions of last year. As I said, we accelerated CapEx in Nigeria. Why? We made commitments to the NCC that we would deal with all the issues of quality of service where there were uplink and downlink issues, drop calls, et cetera. We went and we've agreed with the NCC on a clusterized approach of measuring QOS. In Nigeria, they call it QOE, quality of experience. It's the same thing as quality of service. So we said, look, I said to Karl, let's put all the CapEx in for QOS and for capacity. So therefore, you see the Nigeria CapEx intensity a little bit elevated and then it elevates. The Nigeria CapEx would -- in H2 will moderate back towards what is -- towards more the guidance level. But what did we see there? Very strong data monetization. Data traffic coming at 41%, service revenue coming quite strongly at 54% and then that data growing much more strongly. Voice also had a good performance in Nigeria, and we've sustained the network leadership that we always seek in a market like Nigeria. Looking at the rest of the portfolio in terms of the markets, the key thing is we've seen sustained commercial performance. In particular standout is that active data growth that is growing ahead in a region like SEA, well ahead of subscriber base. So subscribers grew 6.5%, active data subscribers just under 17%. And then on WECA, a similar dynamic, subscribers are quite muted. But with handset strategies and our offers, we're seeing more people actively using the Internet. And there you see a 13% growth in the WECA region. Also, on MoMo, active users growing in SEA at 9.4% and also in WECA 3.8%. I think what is quite interesting about the markets is, if you look at the total number of active subscribers, more than 50% of our subscribers more generally in those markets are fintech subscribers, Ghana and Uganda, obviously, standing out as markets there. The key fintech story is continuing to scale of the ecosystem plus progress with structural separation, where we have focused on Uganda, Ghana and for the balance of the year, we'll also talk about Nigeria. What do I pull out of these results? The advanced services, which are the future proof products that we believe will sustain growth and profitability over the medium term, these grew at 42%. So we're talking about payments, remittance and bank tech type products. These are the ones that have sustained. And the transaction volume is a very pleasing $212 billion through our network. So continuing to see the ecosystem and our fintech business are progressing. We also wanted to update you as stakeholders on what we've been focused on from a regulatory and legal perspective. And I think we put some commentary in our SENS documents kind of on both domains. So starting with regulatory. SIM registration, Karl has spoken to you about third-party agent new SIM registration, which we are adhering to. So that's been an area of focus for us. I spoke about quality of service, but you have quality of service set of issues across various markets. For example, in Rwanda, there were quality of service issues that we had to deal with, specifically in Kigali, where the 3G cells were shrinking and creating quality of experience set of issues. So we put a bit more CapEx there to ensure that we are meeting the quality of service as it's a license obligation. Taxation policies, this is a big topic by the so-called G6, the six biggest operators on the continent of which we are part of. And we're beginning to talk to the authorities as a single voice to say if we want to build and drive a digital economy across Africa that really lifts the people, we have to think about taxation policies in particular, because there are taxes that become a disincentive for, let's say, bringing in handsets into a market, et cetera. And also, we've been dealing with closing tax matters, prior year tax matters, as Tsholo will talk about in a market like Uganda. On the legal side, there are three specific developments that we put in our SENS that I would just like to talk to you about. The first one is the Turkcell matter. I think the Turkcell matter has been ongoing. There's been quite a lot of media commentary about it. And I think as we said in the sense, the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld our view that the matter needed to be heard under Iranian law. So that was upheld. But EAC got a favorable ruling around jurisdiction, and we've gone to appeal that to the Constitutional Court. We'll see how that develops. ATA Cases, there's 5 of them, they started in 2019, 2020. And Lele Macrabia, our legal team are dealing with that. And more recently, on the Chand and Davis matter, they have amended their complaints. They amended the complaint on the 5th of August. And we have time to amend -- sorry to file a motion to dismiss. So in that case, the merits of the cases have not yet been determined. All the arguments are around jurisdiction. Cases in the U.S. have to argue jurisdiction and once you pass that, you go into kind of merits discovery. So we are still at all cases still pretty much there. And the Chand and Davis is the one we're there. Today, we also updated the market that our U.S. Council was approached by the United States Department of Justice. We said we are willing to engage. They've asked for a request of information and that request of information is really about two markets. That's really Afghanistan and Iran. And we've started the process of voluntary engaging with them, and we've not been accused of any wrongdoing. And so this matter as it develops, we'll update the market in the near future. So before I hand over to Tsholo, just wanted to comment again on the very strong H1. Pleasing to see pretty much a lot in the green. On SA, as I mentioned earlier on, we've revised the guidance, and we revised the guidance in a way to reflect the competitive dynamics and what we're seeing today. So just to provide a bit more clarity around the single -- sorry, the service revenue guidance. The previous service revenue guidance was mid-single digits. And I think as the market that you are, you probably read it as 4% to 6%, right, because we haven't been explicit by that, but I think mid-single digit sounds like that. So what we're saying now is low to mid-single digits. So we still are aiming to get towards the top end, but we have widened to reflect where we are today. You see we're at 2.3%. It's not saying that we believe we are going to see the performance sustain there. We're just being realistic with where we are for a 2.3% print means that we are slightly lower than the 4%. On the margin side, we've said we're going to bring the margin down slightly. I think the way to read that is that we're taking a bit of investment to -- particularly in the prepaid market to fight back around distribution and incentives. We have to do that tactically and we're not going to do it on a sustained basis. So we are giving ourselves a little bit of headroom in the near term. But the medium to longer term, we really believe we can get back. The key area of focus is really around prepaid. So with that, let me pass over to Tsholo. I'll come back with the outlook and priorities for the balance of the year. Over to Tsholo Molefe.

Thank you very much, Ralph, and good afternoon to everyone joining us this afternoon for the results. We are really delighted to be presenting a very strong set of financial results for H1 2025, really underpinned by our focused execution as well as disciplined capital allocation. Let me just start by giving you an overview of our key financial messages that we'd like to leave you with. And these things I will unpack as I do the presentation. The first point that I would like to note is that we've seen a very pleasing momentum in our key financial metrics, highlighted by acceleration in both top line growth, margin expansion as well as other financial KPIs. Secondly, you will see improvement in our quality of earnings. This was delivered through good execution and in the context of more stable macroeconomic conditions in our key markets. Notably, we saw better stability in local exchange rates as well as easing inflation trends. The third message is that we maintained a laser focus on ongoing execution of our expense efficiency program, and we delivered ZAR 1.5 billion in savings in the first half and cumulatively ZAR 5.3 billion since we started in 2024. Our free cash flow growth was robust as well in the period, and I will unpack this further. But in brief, it reflects the turnaround in profit and the success of our cash management initiatives. And finally, we sustained the health of our balance sheet and the financial flexibility that is really central to our operational as well as strategic execution. It also ensures that we remain on solid footing, responding effectively to evolving market conditions. If I then move on to the next slide, taking a closer look at the positive momentum in our financial results, you can see across several key performance indicators that we've seen a good improvement on a sequential basis from Q1 to Q2. So this underscores really the translation of our operational execution into tangible business results. And just to highlight a few key ones on the slide here. In terms of top line, you will realize that service revenue growth accelerated in the second quarter to 24.9% growth compared to 19.8% in the first quarter. And in this regard, we had good broad-based performance across several of our OpCos, notably in MTN Nigeria. EBITDA also improved in the second quarter with margin ticking up to 44.3% in the second quarter versus 44% in the first quarter, underlying the disciplined a focus on efficiencies in support of our top line acceleration. In terms of our leverage ratios, these remained within comfortable thresholds. And you can see that consolidated net debt-to-EBITDA improved in Q2, coming down to 0.5x while Holdco leverage remained stable at 1.5x. Of course, this was supported by the improved cash upstreaming from the OpCos that was also much stronger when you look at the profile and you will see that we saw an improvement in the second quarter to ZAR 6.3 billion from ZAR 1.9 billion, I'll give you more color later. So in a nutshell, I think this also provides a good overview of the impetus in our financial trajectory. And I will move on not to review the different elements of our financial results. So as we turn to the details of our financial performance on the summary here, you will see that service revenue growth on a reported basis grew by 23.2%, while in constant currency was up 22.4%, ahead of our medium-term guidance that we provide to the market. Reported EBITDA advanced by pleasing 60.6% and by 42.3% in constant currency, really reflecting both strong revenue momentum, but also margin expansion achieved through rigorous cost management. This enabled a 7.1 percentage point improvement in our constant currency EBITDA margin to 44.2%, up from 37.1% same period last year. So with respect to other key movements, net finance costs, as you can see, declined 69.1% to approximately ZAR 7.1 billion, which was really testament also to the prudent management of our balance sheet and the benefits of lower FX impact that we saw mainly in Nigeria and Ghana. In the table, you will also see an increase in income tax to about ZAR 9 billion, and this was mainly as a result of the turnaround in our profit before tax to ZAR 21.3 billion from a loss position that we reported last year. Beyond that, you see the tax line -- beyond that, the tax line was also impacted by the reversal of the deferred tax asset and a settlement with the revenue authorities in Uganda that Ralph referred to earlier on. You would note that the noncontrolling interest line also swung from positive to negative year-on-year and this was primarily due to the turnaround in MTN Nigeria to profitability. At the bottom line, then you see that earnings per share as well as headline earnings per share were up by more than 200% and 300%, respectively, resulting in the underlying growth in our adjusted headline earnings by about 76% to now ZAR 6.57 per share. I will talk you through more of the earnings performance later but this strong growth was reflected also in the improvement in our adjusted return on equity, which reached 21.5% from 20.2% same period last year. Now if I move on to the analysis of our group service revenue. I noted already the 22% growth in constant currency, and you'll see that the main growth -- main contributors to this were the strong momentum in data within our connectivity platform as well as fintech as we continue to work to scale our platform business. As I run you through the chart, please remember that these are presented in constant currency, and I will highlight the main drivers here. So data revenue rose by 34%, driven largely by higher data traffic underpinned by continued investment of our network and execution of our commercial strategies. Data accounts now for 45% of total group service revenue in the period, up from 40.9% in the first half of last year. Voice revenue increased 11.6%, really boosted again by MTN Nigeria on the back of price increases. But looking across the portfolio, overall demand for voice was resilient in the first half with traffic up 11% year-on-year. The other key drivers was fintech revenue, which grew by 24.9%, mainly in Ghana, Uganda as well as Rwanda, and I'll provide more color again in a later slide. If we now walk -- if I now walk you through some of our larger Opcos, and I'll start with MTN South Africa. The performance was resilient in the first half amidst competitive pressure as well as pressure from the economic environment as a whole. MTN SA service revenue grew by 2.3% led by growth in consumer postpaid, wholesale as well as enterprise segments. Data revenue grew by 4.3% in the first half with some good momentum in the second quarter, accelerating to 4.8% compared to an increase of 3.9% reported in the first quarter. Most of you would be aware of the pressure that we're experiencing on the voice segment in South Africa -- in the South African market and revenue from MTN SA was 22.2% lower. This being managed by the business. And again, there is some encouragement in the second quarter trend where the rate of decline somewhat abated to 2% versus 2.3% in the first quarter. Digital service revenue declined by 2.1%, impacted by lower prepaid recharges, but wholesale revenue increased by 3.1%, mainly due to growth in fixed data. Although fintech revenue in South Africa eased by 2.4%, there was encouraging growth in insurance services and the OpCo has now launched new propositions to accelerate advanced services. Other service revenue, which incorporates enterprise ICT as well as bulk SMS was also higher at 7.8%, really driven by new enterprise client acquisitions in this space. Looking now at the expense profile. Total costs overall were down 5.8%, mainly due to a reduction in cost of sales of 15%, and this was due to lower device cost of sales in the period on the back of reduced sales in prepaid, but as well as off-balance sheet device financing initiatives to support the postpaid segment. Operating expenditure increased by 6.8%, and this included increases in provision relating to the performance share plan as a result of the share price movement. If we exclude these impacts, OpEx was broadly flat year-on-year, really highlighting the ongoing efforts in terms of our cost management program. Consequently, EBITDA decreased by 3.9% on a reported basis and was down 3.6% if we exclude these one-off items. This resulted in a steady year-on-year EBITDA margin of 36.5%. MTN SA also launched some initiatives to accelerate the top line and continues to work on its expense efficiency program to support the profitability. And then in terms of CapEx, MTN SA capitalized about ZAR 3.2 billion in the first half, excluding leases, with CapEx intensity of 12.6% and trending in line with our guidance to the market. We had indicated that the CapEx in SA was expected to be lower this year following the completion of our network resilience program that was completed in the previous year. Now if I move on to MTN Nigeria briefly, which was reported on the 30th of July this year. Just to recap the performance, service revenue increased by 54.1% year-on-year, demonstrating broad-based momentum here from all segments. Data led this top line result, where revenue rose by 68.5% and voice also very strong, growing by 39.9%. In addition to strong execution by the team, the performance, as you would know by now, was also boosted by price increases, and these were implemented mostly in the second quarter, especially for data. Expenses were about 19% in aggregate below local inflation as well as the top line as well as below top line development. And this really underscores the impact of ongoing expense efficiencies in the business, including the benefit of the renegotiated tower leases that we concluded last year. It also reflects the benefit of a more stable macroeconomic environment, such as the local exchange rate as well as easing inflation. So on the back of all this, EBITDA grew by a phenomenal 118% and the margin expanded by 14.7 percentage points to 50.4%. MTN Nigeria's CapEx increased quite substantially to ZAR 7.3 billion, as Ralph indicated earlier. We had -- if you recall, we had reduced CapEx in Nigeria last year, and we've now started to accelerate network investment to enhance network capacity, coverage as well as quality of service. And there's a bit of front loading here, but we do anticipate that there will be a normalization in the second half, which should really benefit the free cash flow generation in MTN Nigeria. Now just zooming on to some of our market performance. The two key regions, SEA and WECA reported strong overall performance. They were -- they both showed top line growth ahead of their respective blended inflation rate. Starting with SEA region. You will see on the left-hand side, service revenue expanded by 21.9%, with data up 41.4% and fintech up 21.7%. And SEA's EBITDA margin improved by 3.1 percentage points to 48.1%. Within SEA, we have MTN Uganda, which continued on a positive overall trajectory, albeit with voice revenue impacted by the regulatory mobile termination rate cuts. Service revenue, however, expanded by 13.3%, supported by strong growth in data and fintech with EBITDA margin up 2.2 percentage points to 53.7%. It is also worth calling out within SEA, MTN Zambia, albeit still small within the region, which is really showing early signs of recovery as we continue to put some investments to sustain this. Now in terms of the WECA region on your right-hand side, service revenue rose by 17%, led by 29.5% increase in data and a 26.4% uplift in fintech revenue. Combined EBITDA margin improved by 4 percentage points to 45.8%. MTN Ghana within WECA delivered service revenue growth of 39.9% and EBITDA margin expansion of 2.5 percentage points to 58.5%. The reported results also in July, again, worth calling out the continued robust performance of this business, which now contributes meaningfully to the group overall. Elsewhere in the WECA region, a couple of Opcos also worth calling out are MTN Cameroon, which reported good results and positive momentum as well as MTN Côte d’'Ivoire, where the benefit of the work that we've been doing there to recover the performance is starting to yield some results. So overall, I would say it was a very strong financial outcome for these markets as well in the period. Now if I briefly move on to Fintech segment. As you can see, we achieved growth in service revenue, as I indicated, 24.9% against the backdrop of increased competitive competition across some of the markets. The results were also primarily driven by strong performance coming from Ghana, Uganda as well as Rwanda. And within this segment, the MoMo revenue, which is the Mobile Money revenue, which excludes Airtime Advance, rose by 25.6%, and this was supported by significant acceleration in Advanced Services, which grew 42%, which now contributes overall 28% from 25% last year. Basic services, as you can see, went up 18.8%. Airtime advances grew by 21% overall. And this segment is still contributing to the overall group -- to the overall growth of the fintech platform as we prioritize scaling the Advanced Services faster. In terms of EBITDA margin for this segment, this was also a pleasing outcome and the profitability of the business is tracking ahead of the mid- to upper 30% range that we have communicated previously. Now moving on to our group expenses. We are really pleased with the overall cost management within the group, which supports the strong financial results that we are reporting today. So total expenses was contained to 5.5% in constant currency with cost of sales down marginally by 0.4%. And this was largely due to lower device cost of sales in South Africa, as I mentioned earlier. The group operating expenses increased by 10.4% in constant currency, mainly driven by network as well as staff costs. And this was achieved against blended average inflation rate of 14% across the portfolio. Once more, it is worth noting that the relative stability in our external environment also assisted resulting in reduced impact from FX volatility and inflationary pressures. In terms of our EEP on the right-hand side, I noted earlier that we realized ZAR 1.5 billion and cumulatively, we've been able to achieve ZAR 5.3 billion against the target that we've given of ZAR 7 billion to ZAR 8 billion over three years from 2024. So we're quite comfortable that we are on the path to achieve that. MTN Nigeria accounting for 78% of the savings and incorporating savings, particularly from the renegotiated tower leases, as I indicated. So on the whole, we are well positioned and tracking well to meet our target, as I indicated. Now if I can move on to our adjusted headline earnings performance and Recon, as I mentioned earlier, the improved commercial results and stable macro drove a 232% increase in attributable earnings per share to ZAR 0.35, which was stronger -- which was a really strong recovery from the loss of ZAR 4.09 in the first half of 2024. The main item impacting our H1 2025 was an impairment loss of ZAR 1.04 coming from Sudan operations in terms of Sudan impairment. After accounting for this and other small adjustments our headline earnings per share rose by 352% to ZAR 6.45, moving from a loss of ZAR 2.56 last year. Headline earnings was also impacted by several nonoperational factors amounting to a net of ZAR 0.12 and these are listed in the table as you can see. Adjusted headline earnings per share growth was therefore 76% to ZAR 6.05 after making all these adjustments from a nonoperational item perspective. Now turning on to our CapEx profile. As we said, we've accelerated CapEx mainly from Nigeria. We spent about ZAR 20.8 billion, excluding leases, representing a CapEx intensity of 19% and slightly above our targeted CapEx intensity of 15% to 18%. The increase in expenditures as I indicated, was largely driven by the acceleration in Nigeria as well as the impact of the stronger Ghana City against the rent, which also drove higher CapEx in our reporting currency. In addition to the investment made in Nigeria, which represents 35% of the total envelope, we also saw MTN South Africa spending 15% -- contributing 15% of the CapEx and the WECA region about 39%, of which the majority of that came from Ghana. We are also committed, as we've indicated, to allocate our capital in a disciplined manner with a focus really on maximizing returns for shareholders and also sustaining the long-term value creation. Just to move on to our free cash flow in the next slide, you will see that our operating free cash flow was robust at 106% increase to ZAR 20.5 billion before spectrum and license acquisitions, reflecting the strength of our underlying business and our cash management initiatives. This was achieved on the back of a stronger reported EBITDA performance, as you see there, and despite the acceleration in CapEx that I just spoke about. So from a cash flow perspective, there was an outflow of 22% towards CapEx investment guided by our value-based capital allocation. After spectrum and licenses as well as accounting for net interest and taxes paid, we generated a pleasing net free cash flow of ZAR 6.7 billion, which was up almost fourfold compared to the previous financial year. Let me just conclude with an overview of our leverage as well as liquidity profile. Starting on the left-hand side of the slide, you will see that our consolidated group leverage, net debt to EBITDA improved to 0.5x as at the end of this period compared to 0.7x at the end of December with holdco leverage remaining steady at 1.5x. And the proportion of non-ZAR debt as well at the holding company level was now approximately 17%, remaining well within our medium-term upper limit that we guided of 40% for foreign currency denominated borrowings. Of course, this also helps us to minimize the ForEx volatility risk. Also pleasing was the cash upstreamed from our Opcos in total, ZAR 8.2 billion in the first half, including ZAR 3.6 billion coming from Ghana and ZAR 1.6 billion from South Africa and the balance coming from various other markets. It has also underpinned our liquidity headroom, which stood at ZAR 39 billion with healthy cash balances as well as committed undrawn facility. Now turning to the right-hand side of the slide. In terms of our maturity profile, this is something that we review on an ongoing basis and manage quite actively. And we are really grateful for the support of the debt markets in terms of our funding activities, which we believe signals confidence in MTN's financial position during prime times as well. We raised ZAR 1.8 billion during the first half under the domestic medium-term note program to refinance maturities for the year and we continue to explore the options to settle the remaining Europoint, which matures towards the end of next year 2026. So we'll update you on this as and when appropriate as we do work to look at options there. So overall, we are comfortable with the shape of our balance sheet and were within comfortable thresholds in terms of resilience and flexibility of our financial profile. So just in summary, we have a strong momentum in our financial performance with an acceleration in our top line, underpinning the robust growth in our earnings as well as cash flows. And we are committed to continue to deliver value for our stakeholders through prudent financial management as well as disciplined capital allocation to be able to drive growth and returns for our shareholders. With that, I will end here and hand over to Ralph.

Thanks very much, Tsholo. Maybe to close off just to look at the outlook and priorities that we have in the near term and over the medium term. The macro outlook, I won't spend too much time on this. You have your own data sets in terms of what you're looking at. But I guess it's clear that we'll continue to operate in an environment of uncertainty and volatility. The trade tariffs that are at play and these have transmission mechanisms that ultimately impact the business. But what we have seen is that we have seen an improved macro in some key markets, stability in Nigeria, improvement in Ghana, pretty stable, and that's been helpful to see the operational performance translate into financial results. I mean these forecasts, you'll have your own. I mean we take these from Standard Bank, IMF, et cetera. So -- but I mean, our sense is that particularly in our key markets, the macro will continue to be kind of fairly stable. The regulatory environment is evolving, I think, particularly in South Africa. We've always been on this point around that to really drive investment in digital economy is actually market consolidation is necessary. And I think some of the developments in the near term are encouraging as we look over the medium term. Our priorities have not changed. I won't go through each and every one of them. Coming back to South Africa. We're going to continue to focus in growing the business. The revised guidance is just extending the lower end of the range to reflect the reality. But the top end of the range remains in place. So we're saying that in the near term, that's how you should see the range, it is a little bit wider, but the team's aspirations are always to be at the top end. Nigeria just sustain the metronomic execution that the team are deploying in that market, sustaining network leadership and investing sufficiently and importantly, for us to make sure that we deal with the QOE issues and work with the NCC and the industry more. There's momentum in the market cluster. The heavy lifting is done by Ghana and Uganda and both markets delivered quality set of results. I think if you take the tax settlement out of Uganda, I think you see an underlying very strong performance there. I mentioned accelerating the fintech strategy. Structural separations will be a focus for us. We've got through the shareholder process in Uganda, working through the regulators. We're going through the same process in Ghana in this month. Nigeria will come to that Q3, Q4. So let's talk about all our initiatives around expense and capital efficiency. And then on the balance sheet side, as Tsholo's concluding comments, it's very resilient and the cash upstreaming that has come up is giving us comfort that the holdco, we have enough cash balances for all the kind of needs of -- from a capital allocation point of view as a group. As I said, one key data point is the improving position of the negative equity and the distributable reserve position in Nigeria. It's been very encouraging. And if we sustain the execution with the macro, we kind of pull forward the anticipation of Nigeria coming back to dividend paying. As you would have seen in our SENS announcement, the second SENS announcement had to start off with the context of strategy. As we get towards the end of 2025, the Board and the management team have been deliberating how does the world look in 3 to 5 years out and how do we need to align ourselves to the opportunities that we continue to see around the demands for data and fintech services across our African markets. That strategic review was concluded in July and was done within the context of assessing the global macro, the geopolitical landscape, technology and competitive context. And the Board came to the point and resolved that the strategy remains the right strategy. We must continue to execute within that. So I think from a strategic perspective, you won't see us coming into 2026, saying too much has changed. It's just about being metronomic and executing. There are a couple of areas that we kind of want to double down and we talk and sometimes yes, the executives talk about pivots, but understand that the strategy remains the same one. And saying as we move towards 2030, we envisage seeing a business in MTN that has a connectivity as a platform, fintech as a platform in digital infrastructure. That's the world we're evolving into, but we are going to go through that evolution in a very deliberate and considered way and making sure that we preserve value through all of that process. And if we do that, we are going to position ourselves as best to capture the opportunities in Africa and remain at the forefront of driving digital solutions for Africa's progress. So within that context of a strategic review, we have announced management changes. I think the key feature is that the same team that has been executing is still the same team that we've appointed to take the strategy forward. Some people have been moved around in terms of different roles, but the aim is still to create value as we look 3 to 5 years out. And that's how we're thinking about the operating and leadership. And I won't go through all the details, you'd have seen it. I think from a strategy perspective, we're also affirming that the investment case for MTN remains one of growth. Obviously, we've got a balanced growth for our investors who are looking for both growth and income. So we're very minded about where in the priority order dividends stack up. We've always said, number one, is we deploy capital to organic growth. Number two, we want to pay down the debt. I think when we resolve the U.S. -- the outstanding eurobonds that are coming to maturity next year, then the mismatch of debt to our earnings disappears. And I think at that point, we can reassess the capital allocation framework and see how the pecking order. We're not there yet, but I think you can well anticipate that number two points today, we're down to a stock of $500 million of debt. That was $2 billion in 2019. So there's been a lot of work to really improve the balance sheet and actually delever and reduce that mismatch. So we're still saying capital allocation for us is still going to be focused on capturing the growth opportunities as we go beyond 2025. And why do we believe in that investment case? It's the exciting demographics, the youthful continent, and we see it in the consumption of data products. We have a large and leading scale, predominantly #1 across our markets and in a few markets, #2, and we want to push and improve on those. And we believe that we are well positioned, particularly as we focused on allocating all our resources and focus on a pan-African basis. And we think that the return profile will continue to improve over the medium term. So ours remains post the strategic review that we believe that this is still plenty of growth out there and that compelling African growth story remains intact. This is a slide that is 4, 5 years old or now it looks like 6 years old that we said for us is an indirect validation of our view in terms of the demand. When you look on the left-hand side, this data traffic 282 petabytes first quarter of 2019. It's 2,000 in the period. Fintech transaction volumes in a quarter, ZAR 1.3 billion, ZAR 5.5 billion. So the demand is still there. We have not plateaued. There's still a lot of growth to invest and monetize and hence, the strategic perspective that we must stay. In conclusion, as I mentioned, one of the 5 key areas, we've enhanced the guidance. At the group level, the mid-teens is now at least high teens. That's because of what we see in the near to medium term as the prospects of delivering on a constant currency basis, higher service revenue, the service revenue that's higher and above inflation. We always need to see our service revenue, having meaningful headroom above inflation, obviously, because of the risk profile of the markets we're operating. South Africa, low to mid-single. What we've done is kept at the top end the same and just pulled it back to reflect the competitive context we find ourselves, particularly around prepaid. Nigeria came out with both 2025 single year guidance, given that we are executing better than we had thought in the first quarter of this year, have issued 2025 guidance as well as medium-term guidance, reestablishing the medium-term guidance framework that we had before the rapid devaluation of the naira and everything else remains the same. The Board to date feels still pretty comfortable at maintaining the minimum dividend of ZAR 3.70 for full year. The Board will be deliberating that between November and February next year to look at that number. But from where we are, we're still keeping that commitment to stakeholders. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for paying attention to Tsholo Molefe and I. Tsholo used the word phenomenal around one of the KPIs. And I said to him in the dry run yesterday, the CFO doesn't use the word phenomenal, but we said we'll use it today. But thank you. I think these are phenomenal results from a perspective of the momentum that we've seen in the first half of the year. Thanks very much, and Thato, bring you to stage to coordinate Q&A.

Thanks so much, Ralph, and Tsholo for that overview. We'll get into the Q&A now. And just to remind those who are on the webcast to submit your questions on them, and I'll read them out. But as usual, we will start inside the room for those who have made their way here. Go ahead.

It's Louise Pillay from Investec. I have a few questions on South Africa as per normal. I guess if you can comment on your market share ambitions in South Africa specifically and how you will achieve that. It appears based on your guidance that you will continue to lose service revenue market share compared to your peer service revenue guidance ambitions. The second question is around strategic initiatives within the SA business and a review of some of the line items. Maybe if you can comment on Network as a Service. It seems you have missed your -- some of your ambition 2025 targets you set almost 5 years ago. Can we expect a review of your wholesale roaming agreements with Telkom and Cell C? And then I guess the third question is, you specifically mentioned scaling of FWA and FTTH in SA. I guess how will this be achieved organically or inorganically?

Four questions from one person, Louise, four questions special. Should we answer that?

Yes. Thanks, Ralph.

Yes, I mean let's frame the guidance. I'll give it another go at this. So at the service revenue, we said that we're just widening the lower end of the range to reflect realistically where we are today with 2.3%. But as we compete, for sure, we're pushing towards. And on the margin side, what we are basically saying is that we're going to put a bit more investment into kind of on the distribution end. So for example, and we've already done that. We've changed ongoing commission, the so-called OGR. Our OGR levels are lower than Vodacom and Telkom, okay? So we said to Charles, please go ahead, just look at OGR in terms of the distribution. You all understand how the distribution structures work in South Africa. So we have the lowest OGR. So if somebody else is offering you higher OGR as you're a dealer, and MTN is #3, that can't keep us competitive even though we're trying to protect margins. So we're pushing -- we're investing a bit more at the dealer and at the distribution end in South Africa. I think you'll start to see that come through. So the lower end of the range is saying, we are showing reality because if I said to you, Louise, we're doing 4% to 6%, I haven't shown that today, ever, okay? So let's just lower that range, but the top remains. So let us see how these cost of sales investments improve our market shares, yes or no. So we are still aspiring for healthy market share. We still aspire for 30% to 35% of all net additions in the market. That aspiration has not changed. We're just wanting to be realistic around the competitive dynamics that we're seeing. So there's a lot of work around, let's say, distribution around devices. The device strategy is quite granular. We have device partners who are bringing devices and attaching the SIM, and we don't have the cost of that, but we're also investing in devices. So our aspirations remain around maintaining or actually growing market share other than -- not the other way around, to be clear. I think the other point, and you must remind because you had 4 questions. What was the second question again?

Network as a Service.

Networks -- Network as a Service. Look, I mean, Network as a Service, my discussion with Charles and this discussion will now move from Charles to Ferdi and Yolanda is I think we have to think about the dynamics of an SA market in terms of MVNOs. South Africa right now, if you think about it strategically and you step back, there are 2 fully invested networks in MTN and Vodacom, 2 fully invested networks, okay? High quality and all of that. Telkom with respect, have a portion of their network and then they roam a little bit on us and on Vodacom, okay? And then you have these MVNOs are coming on the banks, et cetera. So I'm not disappointed that we're missing that target because actually, if we don't think about it strategically long term, you're putting all this CapEx and you're having all these MVNOs a bit like OTTs. They don't put the CapEx in, but they can go and give you much cheaper data than you, yourself, the generator of that data who's got the cost of production can. So I'm very happy to miss that because ultimately, you could find yourself where Europe found itself go and look at the Netherlands, okay? You look at the Netherlands 10, 15 years ago, the MVNOs wrecked the market on retail pricing. So Charles is missing that, that's okay. You can mark me as read. But strategically, if we're not thinking about. So we will go and look for the retail business, but we have a walkaway point where the pricing is -- does not have sufficient headroom at the cost of production and say, "hey, Charles, just like leave it, okay?" We're not going to -- that strategically, you need to understand that's how we're thinking about it. Because if you're not careful, you'll have a Netherlands effect. Jens, a former colleague, saw that happen live, when he was in Vodafone in Europe. So on that point, I need to share some of the questions with Tsholo. Tsholo, which are those 2 remaining questions you want to take?

Which one was there?

I'll ask, Louise to repeat the second -- I think it was FWA.

FWA, I can take that one. So let me finish on the FWA. Look, I mean we'll push on FWA. We have -- as long as we have sufficient spectrum, and we can get the quality almost fiber like to a home, we will do that. We're looking at the outdoor units, how they can help us with spectral efficiency that will invest to the extent that unlike Nigeria, where they have 100 megahertz of 3,500 spectrum, we don't have as much. But between the 2,600 and 3,500, we'll make a plan. And then FTTH, I mean, FTTH in our view, and we've been consistent. So we won't make it up that FTTH medium to long term, there must be some sort of consolidation opportunity that will come in one way or the other. We're not going to be building -- allocating capital. We're going to have a fiber overbuild in this country before you know it. So I mean, that's kind of our position. But FWA, and you saw Charles and he team have really pushed Home as one of our highlights for the period. So we'll continue to invest in that way.

So just in the interest of efficiency, there are a couple of questions that were covered by Louise's question, but just to dovetail on that. And maybe a question for Tsholo. Can you -- do you expect CapEx to sales to South Africa to decrease significantly in the midterm given the guidance that was provided? And then back to Ralph, the second question. How do you think about pricing in South Africa in terms of your medium-term guidance outlook? So just on CapEx.

Yes. I think the -- I mean, the CapEx is 12.6% now. We will obviously review relative to the revised guidance, what is the acceptable range. It will definitely be below the 15% to 18% that we guided at group. We think, obviously, it will be below that initially. But we'll obviously go through the business planning process now and just frame up the numbers, and we'll communicate later on in the year.

Yes, I think on the pricing side, in essence you got to think about it prepaid, postpaid. Postpaid, the pricing regime has been quite clear. There's annual and the market is quite comfortable with that. It looks more like developed markets kind of pricing. And on the prepaid side, I think we took a step which we believe is the right medium to long-term one is that even on the prepaid side, we have to price up to reflect the inflationary cost, as you see prepaid pricing up in other markets. So we'll still continue. I mean, pricing and the prepaid is obviously quite granular MyTon offers, all of those kind of things. So you can't have a general statement on it. But I think the direction of travel over the medium term is you do need to pass some of the inflation on to the customers because obviously, there's a big CapEx that needs to be financed there.

Thanks, Ralph, sticking on the [indiscernible] Myuran.

You got a big voice, we're going to hear you.

For the broadcast.

It's Myuran Rajaratnam from MIBFA. A question on capital intensity. Many of your major opcos are sort of guiding medium-term CapEx is coming down. The intensity is coming down. What gives you the confidence that this is happening? Is it the technology is getting better? Is it getting cheaper because it's open source or something like that? Or is it the fact that you are now better endowed with spectrum than previously? Is it a mixture of these things, there's something else? Maybe some thoughts on that, please.

Yes. I mean our framework has been clear. At a group level, we see 18% to 15%. So the direction of travel is down towards 15% over the medium term is what you need to think about I mean I guess there's a combination of factors that are market-specific. So you can't make a general statement. In a market like Nigeria as an example, lots of spectrum. They've got a good spectrum estate, but we're also pushing FTTH in Nigeria. So there's a big race to own the home in Nigeria, and we are taking a FWA and FTTH approach. Big clusters [indiscernible], there we're putting fiber. FWA kind of elsewhere. So Nigeria's dynamic will be different from Ghana. Ghana, they don't have 5G spectrum. So they're putting a lot of fiber. So they have very little FWA. They're putting fiber because the 3,500 spectrum has not been made available. So you have to look at market by market. But if you aggregate it, I think the direction is down as a function of spectrum. And also the technology actually is improving capacity. There are these things called massive MIMO. So some of our OEMs provide technology that helps boost capacity with the same RAN network. So there are multiple factors, but I think the main thing is the direction of travel is kind of 18% to 15%. We're at a bit higher end. I think some of our peers are much lower, but we're saying that's because where we are, we're still seeing growth.

Just checking in the room again if there any hands. Okay. Just maybe a few questions from the webcast. Maybe a question here that covers a few relating to the DOJ investigation. Can you provide more color on the DOJ investigation? Does it relate to the same issues as the ATA cases, Anti-terrorism Act cases? What sort of information has the DOJ requested? And can you give us what are the next steps?

Yes. I mean we were as comprehensive as we can be with this kind of investigation. So there's -- through our lawyers, there was a request for the information and we said we would collaborate. The request for information is related to our previous market of Afghanistan for prior years and Iran. So that has been their request. We are talking to them. They have not accused us of any wrongdoing. And that's as far as we can disclose to you right now because anything else to your point around, is it related to this, that will be speculation. So we won't go into that speculation. I think the SENS is very factual and complete.