Airtel Africa Plc

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Airtel Africa 9-month 2026 results. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. If you should need assistance during the call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Sunil Talda. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. A very good morning. Good evening to all of you and thank you for joining on today's call. I'm joined on the line by Kamal Dua, our CFO and Alistair Jones, our head of investor relations. We will shortly be answering your questions, but first I would like to provide you with a brief overview of the recent performance at Airtel Africa. I think these results speak for themselves. We have continued to produce a strong operating and financial performance. with reported currency revenue growth of 28.3% and almost 36% growth in EBITDA over the last year. Constant currency revenues and EBITDA, a reflection of the underlying performance saw encouraging growth of 24.6% and 31% respectively. The outstanding feature of this performance in my view is the continuing scale of opportunity across the business. We operate across African continent with a combined population in excess of 650 million people where the penetration of both telecom and financial services remains low. We have a broad portfolio of services that are in high demand spanning data, home broadband, enterprise solutions, mobile money and merchant payments to name a few. As digital adoption and financial inclusion continues to rise, This positions us to sustain strong growth rates over the coming years. Our refined strategy is working to capture this opportunity as we attract customers and build loyalty in order to sustain this industry leading growth. These results underscore the substantial work we have been undertaking over the last few years to embed this customer centric strategy across the group. The result has been increased adoption of our digital services, which allows customers to access them with ease alongside the launch of transformative offerings, such as the AI spam alert, which protects our customers from fraud and the recent partnership with Starlink, which will enhance connectivity to our customers across the footprint. These are strong examples of innovation and innovative initiatives that differentiate us from competition and solidifies our position of being able to capture the significant opportunities across our markets. To deliver an outstanding customer experience, we have accelerated investment to increase capacity and coverage across our footprint. We have increased our sites by approximately 2,500 and expanded our fiber network to over 81,500 kilometers as we focus on enhanced coverage and data capacity to further improve the customer experience. this investment remains the cornerstone of our ambition to capture a larger share of the opportunity on offer across the continent and is reflected in the strong operating and financial results we have reported this morning in summary our primary focus remains delivering an exceptional customer experience essential for creating value for all our stakeholders our revenues reach 1.3 Let me now briefly run through the financial performance in Cord 3 specifically. Our revenues reached $1.69 billion, which was 24.7% growth in constant currency and acceleration from 24.2% in the previous quarter. Given the recent foreign exchange developments, this translated into a growth of almost 33% in reported currency. On a regional basis, a key highlight was the performance in Francophone Africa, which saw its constant currency growth accelerate from 15.8% in Q2 to 18.7% in Q3, as our investments and strategic focus have helped drive a strong recovery over the last few years. In Nigeria, strong demand and tariff adjustments contributed to a further acceleration in growth to 53% in constant currency. While in East Africa, constant currency growth of 16.1% remains robust despite evolving market dynamics over the quarter. Moving on to our two primary business segments, our mobile services business continued to see strong trends with operating momentum in customer growth. Usage and output driving revenues 23.6% higher in constant currency. Customers of 179.4 million grew by double digits with data customers rising almost 15% to 81.8 million. Smartphone penetration increased almost 4 percentage points reaching to 48.1%, but this also reflects the scale of the potential for the smartphone opportunity and take up in our footprint. Data traffic increased by almost 47% as data usage per customer reached 9.3 GB per month in quarter three, up 25.6% from the previous year, and an 8% increase from quarter 2 levels. It is clear that underlying fundamentals combined with a strong execution are enabling the sustained level of demand. In addition, data R2 remains supported by these operational trends with a 16.2% increase in quarter 3 leading to a data revenue growth of 35.5% in constant currency terms. With data revenues now being the biggest component of revenues, the performance in this segment is key to sustaining a strong overall group revenue performance. Now on to another very significant growth engine for us, the mobile money business. Able money crossed two thresholds in the last quarter. Firstly, it exceeded the 50 million customer mark with 52 million customers at the end of quarter three. The second milestone was seen the annualized total process value or TDV exceed 200 billion dollars reaching over 210 billion dollars a growth of 36 percent both these achievements reflect not only the significant market opportunity but also the structural competitive advantage and scalable platform which has driven increased customer engagement as ecosystem continues to expand with only 52 of our almost 180 million gsm customers to sustain this strong customer growth momentum remains intact. This combined with continued uptake of new services and increased engagement on the platform highlights a very compelling growth narrative. In the quarter revenue growth of 28% in constant currency and EBITDA margins of over 50% differed decent class financials where growth, profitability and strong cash conversion enables the continued scaling of this very attractive business. group with EBITDA margin continue to expand to 49.6% in quarter three up from 49% in quarter two as cost efficiencies, a more stable macro backdrop and operating leverage continues to benefit. Notable mentions are Nigeria where margins increased to 57.8% and a further increase in francophone margins to 44.3% on the back of strong operating results. At a group level, this has driven a very pleasing 31% increase in constant currency EBITDA, which when combined with currency tailwinds has resulted in a 40.8% increase in reported currency EBITDA. Within finance costs, aside from the most stable FX environment, the group's effective interest rate has declined by 200 basis points. We have seen the interest rate cycle turning more supportive with policy rates moving lower and the increase free cash flow generation enabling us to pay off higher rate debt. Leverage remains very comfortable with least adjusted leverage declining to 0.7 times down from 1.1x in the prior year. Adjusting the extraordinary items in the previous year and all foreign effects gains or losses we have seen the underlying EPS increase from 7.4 cents in the prior period to 11.6 cents in the current nine month period an increase of 57 percent basic EPS has increased to 13.1 cents from 4.4 cents in the prior year underpinning this performance has been our capex investments as we communicated at the h1 results We've announced CapEx diamonds of between $875 million to $900 million for this financial year. This is a significant step up from previous year, reflecting continued confidence in the outlook for the growth and scale of the opportunities available for us to capture. In this nine-month period, CapEx increased over 30% to $603 million, and we are on track to deliver according to our guidance. As I highlighted earlier, the prospects for multi-year growth remains very apparent, and this accelerated investments will provide the platform necessary to capture a higher share of this growth, while also enabling us to unlock additional growth opportunities in areas such as data centers, but also the home broadband space where we see strong momentum. Before I hand it over, you know, the Q&A, just summarize a few key points. Firstly, there were strong results with constant currency revenue and EBITDA growing by almost 25% and 31% respectively in Q3, translating to a 33% and 41% reported currency revenue and EBITDA growth. Operating momentum remains intact with strong customer base growth and usage growth across our telecom business. Aided money continues to scale with strong results, reflecting the truly unique business opportunity. And we are seeing strong progress in the preparations for the IPO, which remains on track for the first half of 2026. We have accelerated our investments to capture the significant growth opportunity that is available to us and we believe this will put us in much stronger position to showcase our ability to capture the structural growth potential. We are excited by the future and we see a unique opportunity to sustain strong levels of growth going forward through a razor-like focus on strategy of putting the customer at the heart and center of everything we do. We look forward to reporting our successes in the future and continuing to generate value for our shareholders. And with that, I would now like to open the line for questions for which I'm joined by Kamal. Operator, I now hand over to you to facilitate the Q&A.

Thank you, Sal. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1 on your phone now. You will hear a confirmation tone that you have joined the queue. If you decide to withdraw the question, please press star and then 2 to remove yourself from the list. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1 now. The first question that we have today is from Rohit Modi of Citi. Please go ahead.

Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on the results. I have three, please. Firstly, on EA, as you mentioned, higher competitive intensity in some of the markets. Can you give more color on which are the markets where you're seeing this, you know, higher competitive intensity and, you know, how you think, you know, how we should model numbers for future quarters? Do you think that this is more, you know, short-term that you're seeing or with more long-term impact on this? Second is in Nigeria. You'll be lapping the price increases this quarter. Just trying to understand how you see the growth in Nigeria beyond this quarter. I mean, I think fully you'll be lapping the next quarter particularly and give us more color on that. And third question is, if you can please remind us in terms of your leverage targets, given leverage has come down to 1.9, at what leverage will you look at capital location policy? Thank you.

Thanks Roy for your compliments and the question. Let me just take the first question first on East Africa. If you look at East Africa, it is our largest market segment and this is one market where we've been consistently performing over the last few years and many quarters. It's a very, very robust business that we manage in East Africa. First, let me talk about the underlying metrics of the business so that we are clear that there is no structural underlying issues in East Africa. Let me start with our base growth. If you look at our base growth, the business is growing at about 9.5% in terms of our customer base growth. Our smartphone growth, which is another very important metric that we look at, is growing at about 19% or so. So, in terms of, you know, our underlying metrics performance, the business remains very, very stable and strong. The opportunity in East Africa remains very, very compelling. You know, it's a very strong business for both money as well as for GSN for us. And as I said, over the quarters and years demonstrated our ability to execute very, very beautifully and delivered strong results. In the last, you know, few quarters, there is one thing that we've experienced is a significantly higher competitive intensity. And if you remember, you know, this was the same story on Franco Africa about six or seven quarters ago where we had said that Franco, there's a significantly higher competitive intensity. And what our underlying metrics, which is, you know, customer base growth, smartphone penetration, et cetera, et cetera, were all looking all right. So, because of this competitive intensity in few markets, we have seen a temporary challenge, but we have rolled out action and I am fairly confident because of our very strong team and their ability to execute plus the capabilities that we have added that we will be able to accelerate growth in East Africa as well. There is just one more thing that I would like to highlight. In the last one quarter, you know, the quarter three, there was certain regulatory, you know, challenges that the business faced which are very temporary in nature because of which there was certain, you know, the internet outages were called out. or certain security issues, which is not only specifically to us, but for the market, which temporarily impacted the growth of the business. And hopefully, you know, if, because this is now behind us, that was a temporary issue. We are fairly confident of our prospects in East Africa. We don't give guidance with respect to our future quarters. So I'll not be able to give you guidance, but I want to offer confidence that we remain confident about the opportunity that East Africa offers. are able to execute brilliantly and that is demonstrated capacity that we have shown over the past few quarters and years and the actions that we have rolled out should start to see your results in the coming quarters. Moving to your second question on Nigeria pricing, Nigeria you know first let me just give you a context as to how this price adjustment has benefited the entire industry. This price adjustment was very very badly needed by the industry. You know what this has done is it has provided a lot of stability in the industry and industries responded very very positively because our investments in Nigeria have gone up overall at industry level has gone significantly. What that is doing it is actually is fueling demand in Nigeria. If I look at it from a customer point of view The price adjustment has been very well accepted by customers because while we see some titrating when it comes to voice consumption, but from a data point of view, but from a data point of view, we are seeing very, very strong acceleration in data consumption numbers. So, our base growth has improved, which means there are more customers that are coming into the industry. The consumption has gone up, which is obviously a great news. which basically goes to see that the customer has accepted the, you know, the price adjustment, you know, very positive. We've made a lot of investment in improving the quality of service as an industry and Airtel has done a lot of work in improving the quality of service. We've implemented a lot of, you know, additional capabilities so that we continue to accelerate our growth in the coming quarters as well. Coming to your question specifically on pricing, We about 40% to 50% of last year growth came from tariff. And we see that, as you said, we will be overlapping this tariff period, whether growth completely slow down, we have given the current momentum in the business. we have made, we remain very confident about our growth prospects in Nigeria. The real results will be visible to us in the next three to four months from now as we start to report the quarter one performance which will be in a full overlap of the pricing numbers in Nigeria.

And as far as your third question is concerned regarding the leverage target for the company, I think we are fairly comfortably placed at 1.9x of leverage. our lease adjusted leverage as you're coming down gradually and is standing at 0.7. So, financially, I think we've been pretty comfortable. We per se do not have any target in my mind, our mind to say that like, you know, we have taken a target. But nonetheless, I think from a balance sheet point of view, I think we are in good shape and in a great health. Thanks.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. The next question we have is from Tracy Kivunyu of SBG Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and congratulations to the Airtel team for the results. A few questions from me. The first question on Francophone region. Again, congratulations. Very strong acceleration we see. I just want to understand. which are the key regions in francophone that drove that for data. And if you could give us an update on how mobile money is growing, particularly in countries like DRC, which is one of your largest there, what sort of levers are you unlocking? Is it your basic remittances or are you seeing it across the business? My second question on Francophone is on voice. Can still see it in declining territory, albeit at a lower base. So do you think we've lacked the effects of voice declines and will be returning to growth in fourth quarter? The next question is on Nigeria. This is the last question for Nigeria. So on VAT, these reforms that would allow Nigerian companies to claim input VAT, Have you done any sort of analysis that could share on the impact of that on your future EBITDA margin and CapEx estimates for Nigeria? And lastly, on Nigeria, what is your 4G population coverage at the moment? Thank you.

Thank you very much for your compliments and your questions. address your question on Francophone Africa. If we look at Francophone markets, Francophone markets offer massive opportunity for growth and you know both in terms of the for GSM as well as for the mobile money, there is a massive opportunity for growth for category penetration as well as upgrade opportunity for you know moving our customers from 2G to 4G. And What we have done is given this opportunity, we've stepped up our investments in Francophone Africa. So that's one thing which is driving growth in Francophone Africa. We've stayed very, very true to our strategy. Our strategy is very focused, which is focused on making sure that we deliver great experience to our customers. And we've made massive amount of investments both in our network, which is on the radio side and also on the transmission side to ensure that we provide seamless experience to our customers. Our teams have done a fabulous job on staying true to our strategy. And that's what is driving growth across markets. What we have done is, and there's a significant investment, as you pointed out, that voice is actually, across all the regions, francophone markets have the lowest voice usage per customer. And therefore, what we've been, and we've seen this usage also decline because the voice outputs in these markets are high. And what we see is customer moving to OTT. and and therefore and that leads to also very high you know data consumption the data outputs are also very high what we've also done is we've significantly expanded our 4g coverage in our in our 4g sites in in francophone francophone markets and today 90 percent of the sites are 4g sites and this number used to be about 85 86 percent of about a year ago and this is resulting into a very strong smartphone customer growth of about 25 percent and that is driving a data revenue growth of about 34% and that demand we see continue to increase. This is a customer behavior and right now what we're doing is we're making sure that we continue to provide seamless experience to our customers. You've been asking about you know, some color with respect to market, we do not provide market level, market level information, but I, but I have just painted the picture for the overall francophone Africa and we remain very, very positive about our prospects in this market and we see a massive opportunity for both GSM as well as mobile money for, you know, for the francophone Africa. I want to talk about the Nigerian.

yeah so nigeria as you're rightly saying uh the nigeria vat is uh claimable effective first of january and uh our estimate is uh roughly that will give us a margin increase of one and a half percent in in nigeria starting from uh quarter four of this financial year

Thank you. Another question on population coverage. Yeah.

Hello?

Yeah. So, you asked another question on annual money, you know, the annual money growth and why we you know divided this into various segments such that we we've offered I think that was your question. So, what we've done is we've we've divided our AT money total revenue into into wallet services and financial services and merchant services. Now, what we've done is in the past the the business was primarily focused on driving cash in cash out and peer to peer revenue. And as the business has achieved scale, and we are seeing, you know, very strong traction in our business, while this is our strength, which is driving our leveraging our go to market and accelerating customer base, which has been driving business for us. What we now want to do is we want to make sure that our payment and transfer business and financial services business starts to trade, you know, there's a higher flow. And this is being led through our efforts, which is digital efforts, which is driving app penetration and making sure that we drive engagement on the app and drive multiple use cases. And that's driving and accelerating the growth for our little money business. Very quickly on the other question that you asked on Nigeria, 4G pop cover is about 82% for us.

Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1 now. The next question we have comes from Molly Whitcomb of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. I just have one actually. It's about the Starlink direct-to-sale partnership that you announced recently. I was wondering if you could give us some color, perhaps timeline to launch, the potential upsides that you see from this, and just whether it's customer demand-driven or filling a business need. That would be great. Thank you very much.

So if I heard you correctly, there was a slight disturbance in the audio. Your question is on Starlink.

Yes, that's correct.

All right. So, I'll just give you a little bit of a context on, you know, what the agreement that we signed with Starlink. This is the second agreement that we announced with Starlink. The first was, the first agreement that we announced, you know, I think two quarters ago, was with respect to, you know, offering enterprise connectivity solutions to our customers across our 14 markets and also for for backhauling. The recent agreement that we signed on 16th of December that we announced, what it covers is offering direct to sales services to our customers across the 14 operating markets that we have in our footprint. I'll tell you how it works. The way it works is we'll be offering through the the gen one as SpaceX refers to it as German, which is SMS and light data services. Using these services, all our customers, Airtel customers across our 14 markets, once we launch this service, subject to approvals from our regulators, using their existing 4G and 5G phones, we'll be able to remain connected anywhere across these 14 markets. In their respective markets, each time when a customer goes out of a terrestrial coverage, the customers will fall on to the satellite coverage and which is offered through Starlink. The face of the service remains Airtel. So as long as the customer has an active Airtel SIM, the customer will be connected even if the customer goes out of a terrestrial coverage using their existing 4G or 5G devices. So that's how this service works. What it does is, as I said, because we are the face of the service for the customers, be controlled into an experience for the customers and you know also for the security uh the entire you know system moves through through us through our our operating systems what we are doing right now is we are in the process of because we announced this partnership on 16th of december we are in the process of seeking regulatory approvals uh you know across all our markets and we're fairly confident that very soon we'll be able to also tell you where we are launching the service We are the first operator to offer this service to our customers in the 14 markets that we operate in. So there's a little bit of time that it is taking us to receive this approval. Both us and these SpaceX teams are working with the regulators to ensure that we get these approvals in time. It's a great service for a continent like Africa, where still there is a huge coverage gap. And therefore what we will do by offering this service, one is pitch the digital divide and make sure that we are driving digital and financial inclusion by offering this service. And as I said, as we are the first operator to offer, at this point in time, wherever we launch this service, it also gives us some amount of creative advantage to deliver best experience to our customers.

uh and and showcase that this is this service we believe is very very complementary in nature when we when we start offering the service across our footprint that's very clear thank you can i just follow up um since if you're going to launch this uh direct to sell product um does this mean that you will scale back your coverage ambitions longer term in some markets

see doesn't compromise you know the way we are looking at it is this is a complementary service and we don't see this as replacing so wherever as we so till the time we expand our terrestrial network this service is a complementary service in any area where we don't have this there is no telecom coverage this service ensures that our customer remains connected with the network and this ties in actually very beautifully with a core strategy of making sure that, you know, we provide the best experience to our customers. And that has been the driving force behind us signing this agreement with SpaceX. It is not to either save our capital investments to say that, you know, we will offer the service because customer will need an Airtel SIM, an active Airtel SIM to be able to access the service. So, we would like to you know our primary this thing is and this this service is actually a great benefit for the customers especially in part of rural areas. In the metro areas or the urban areas the customer will remain on our terrestrial network unless there is there is any disturbance on the network that is when the customer falls on to the satellite network. So customers will not lose connectivity has been the underlying in the driving force behind us signing this agreement with StarPay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question we have comes from David Lopez of New Street Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity and congrats on the results. A couple of questions, please. The first one is on margins. I know you don't give guidance on margin, but I was wondering if you can talk, how much confident are you for next year for margin improvements? And could you comment on the cost structure? I think with the macro improving and also the Dengote refinery being at full capacity, how is that going to play on your margins? And the second question is on the network sharing with Vodacom and the one we're going to get. Could you comment on maybe the timeline? When are we going to see benefits from these agreements? Thank you.

Thanks, David. Let me take the first question on margins first. seen what we've seen is about 240 basis points improvement on constant currency over last year and this entire improvement has happened you know finally because of I would say three areas because of three things first is there is a very stable and an improving macroeconomic environment where we have seen Currencies have remained stable, inflation is coming down, growth is improving and overall the fuel prices have remained stable. So, that is in the, you know, one area. The second is we have also seen acceleration in our revenue growth that is also helping us to, you know, improve margins. And finally, there is a very, you know, very, very strong and this is something that we announced about six or seven quarters ago, a cost efficiency program that we have launched. It is a combination of these three factors which has helped us to improve our margins by 240 basis point. Now, on the cost efficiency side, we remain very, very focused and the entire organization is very focused on identifying, you know, costs with, you know, from the idea of eliminating waste and not attacking any growth enabling costs. So, that program continues to run and we are very fairly confident that, you know, this program will continue to give us and it will continue to yield benefits to us. The only thing that, you know, the currency environment and the macroeconomic environment, the specific thing that you spoke about with respect to Nigeria, we are seeing currently the currency is improving, it is down to about 1380 is the last number that we have seen. The actions which have been taken by the government is down, the growth is improving. So, the current outlook remains you know economic outlook in our largest market remains very positive. The macroeconomic environment supporting there is no reason why our efforts are there to constantly continue to find you know opportunities to eliminate waste in our business and continue to improve margins. As you said we do not give guidance, I will not be able to provide guidance but I just want to paint a picture for you to say our cost efficiency program, we are very, very focused on that macroeconomic environment every indicator today across our large markets, because we've seen currency improving across all our markets, barring maybe one. So that environment remains very, very positive for now. And therefore we remain fairly confident that things can, you know, should continue to improve. On the network sharing agreement, You know, what we did was we announced a network sharing agreement with MTN for Nigeria and Uganda a few quarters ago, and very recently with Vodacom in Tanzania and DRC, and also for, you know, Tanzania DRC was covered expansion, duplicate, you know, and also for sharing the fiber networks This was, this is being done to eliminate, you know, fundamentally if you look at in a continent like Africa, there is a huge opportunity for us to expand our coverage, which is the ask and each time when we expand coverage, we increase our base growth and overall revenue for the industry goes up. To eliminate duplication of investments in infrastructure is the reason why we start to all our other partners and we have signed these agreements. The other challenge that we have in our markets is making sure that our networks remain resilient and that resilience also drives growth and because if one network goes down, we fall on the other network and those are agreements that we have signed with our partners. So, from the point of view of avoiding duplication and ensuring our expanding coverage and ensuring that our networks remain resilient. These benefits have already started accruing to some of the benefits have started accruing to our business. From a cost point of view, we will be able to share maybe at a later date, but some of these agreements are in play as we speak. And there is more needs to happen. And we will share, you know, a little more texture to what benefits are we accruing in the coming quarters. But as I said, the benefits are at three levels. First is additional coverage, which allows us to acquire, you know, accelerate our base growth and therefore accelerate our revenue. resilient networks, reduce outages, better experience, community improves, and it improves our revenue. Avoidance of capex, that's something that helps us to expand coverage, and it also reduces our operations and maintenance and some amount of operating expenses comes down. So there are benefits which happen across the growth line and the cost lines, which is the benefit that we are seeing of signing these agreements with our partners.

Very clear, thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1, no. The next question we have comes from Samuel Goberto of Cardinal Stone Partners. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Can you guys hear me? Hello. Samuel, can you speak up, please, so that we can hear you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon again. Congratulations on your impressive performance. Pretty much expected, right? But my question is on a few things that I just need clarity on. Number one is we saw a lower print in your effective tax rates despite the higher profits before tax in the period, right? So I'm just trying to understand what's brought about that and why is the number for your effective tax rates in your... Hello?

Samuel, we can't hear you. Is something about profit after tax?

Yes, so I'm saying why was there a lower print in your effective tax rates despite profit before tax being higher in the period. Yeah, effective tax rates was lower in the period despite a higher print in profit before tax. So let's understand what drove that and why is the number for effective tax rates in your earnings rate is different from the breakdown you have in your IRPAC. My next question is, in the period, there's also a line that says your group effective interest rates is lower for nine months, right? But when I did a surface-level check on your cash flow, and it's particularly the financing activities, there was a higher net borrowing in the period. So I'm just trying to understand why. you have a lower effective interest rate in the period uh despite that and lastly um dango recently announced that there's going to be like an increase in pms price by about 100 and effectively we've seen you know four stations do the same here in nigeria my question to that effect is is there a cause for concern with respect to how margins has been you know recovering right so i do you guys have a concern and if there is any concern how are you moving ahead of that, you know, headwind. Did you guys get my question?

Yeah, hi. So our effective tax rate is reported at roughly 39.6%. See, there are too many moving parts in calculation of this effective tax rate. One is a mix of our profit making, of course, and loss making, of course. So technically like in our profit making of course, the weighted average effective tax rate is roughly 32 and a half percent. Then there are a few loss making headquarters of course, where, you know, we haven't triggered this recognition of the DTA. And there's a lot of upstream which has been happening from of course, by the way of dividend. So all this WHT, which eventually has been paid for repatriation of dividend also gets accounted in the tax line. Yeah. So, it is a combination of multiple things which eventually is resulting into an higher tax rate of 39.6 versus a corporate tax rate of 32.5% in the profit making of course. On an year-on-year basis, this is coming down from 41 to 39.6. This is primarily a denominator impact because our profits are rising. Hence, the WHT what we are paying for the repatriation as a percentage to the profit which has been reported is declining. So, this is at a very macro level you know why the ATR is higher than the corporate tax rate and what are the broad reasons for a reduction in the ATR the effective tax rate. But if you have any specific questions I would request you to just drop a note to Alistair then we can come back to you on that specific question on the ATR. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you sir. The next question we have comes from John Cardis of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Let me add my congratulations for the results that you printed today. I've got three questions, please. The first one is, what are the key considerations driving your decision of where to IPO the mobile money business in which stock exchange. So what are the key considerations driving that decision? Secondly, in the statement, you talk about closer integration of the GSM and the Airtel money services. It would be really nice to add a little bit more detail to that. What do you mean by that and what are the consequent benefits? And thirdly, did I hear you correctly that customers with their existing handsets can access Starlink? I didn't know that was possible. Could you sort of help me out there to help me understand why that is? Thank you.

All right. Thanks, John. Let me answer your third question first. because the other two are related to money and I'll take it. On the start on the on the Starlink, the direct to sales service, customers can access because we have signed up, we have, you know, signed this agreement, and we allow those customers to access the satellite service through our network. And that's how the service works. And you're, you're, you're right, you know, as you that customers with their existing handsets, 4G or 5G handsets, will be able to use the genuine services offered by Starlink, which is SMS and live data. So they'll be able to make calls, voice calls on certain OTTs. You know, once we roll out these services, subject to the regulatory approvals from the respective office, and they are at this point in time engaged with, you know, along with the SpaceX teams. to get regulatory approvals from the markets. Moving on to your other question, you know, as we've communicated even in the past, we continue to evaluate all major listing venues and we are very close to finalizing the preferred location and we will provide further updates to the market regarding the selected venue and the advisors in the due course. The other question that you had with respect to, see if you look at the mobile services and money services are interdependent and hence these services are exchanged in the ordinary course of business which includes Paying money providing services to GSM like recharge, collections, and world disbursements. And the GSM business provides services to A2Money like SMS, USSD, ID support, and the go-to-market services. And then additionally, A2Money provides added services for improving the customer stickiness for which GSM pays remuneration to A2Money. So for all this, there is a value or a cost attached to it. as both businesses are gradually maturing, and also the, you know, so all these are governed by an IGA. And this IGA is, is what pretty much guides all these activities. What we've seen is as the businesses are gradually maturing, and also the expiry of the extinct lock ins that we had, the dependencies on each other is coming down, accordingly, the prices have been revised, considering the effect of changing market dynamics and while ensuring that they continue to be at arm's length. So that's what, you know, the interdependencies and the IGA is. What we are making sure that, you know, all these businesses are intertwined, as I said, but they are all governed by an intergroup agreement that we have. And these are the services that each business provides to the other.

Thank you, sir. You can have the next question. The next question we have comes from Nenad Meringi of APSA. Please go ahead.

Thank you, gentlemen, and congratulations on your strong set of results. Two questions from me. The first is regarding Nigeria's renewed leases. Could you please share details on some of the terms that you can disclose, whether there are any changes to USD indexing on the lease agreements and any fuel adjustments? and what does this mean for the new average lifetime of leases in Nigeria? By how much are they extended? The second question is regarding mobile money business. Could you please share the revenue breakdown from Basic services, that's cash in, cash out, and airtime advance vis-a-vis the advanced services tied to ecosystem transactions. And in ecosystem transactions, could you give us a breakdown, if possible, between payments, micro-lending, micro-insurance, et cetera? Thank you.

Sunil, can you hear us, sir?

Operator, can you hear us?

Yes, sir. We can hear you now.

Yeah, okay. Sorry, there was some technical glitch in between. So, I was saying there are two primary tower companies which we have it in Nigeria. The first one is ATC and the second is IHS. So, the contract with ATC, if you recall, was been renewed in September 2024 and the term was till, I think it was 12 years of contract which is renewed. So, that is the first element of the renewals. And the second is the IHS and the IHS contract is been renewed till 2031. So, these are the renewal terms from Nigeria to TAR companies. And related to your second question, which comes to the breakup of our revenue of Airtel money, we do not disclose the one which you've been asking for, like, you know, what's the revenue of cash in and cash out. What we disclose is the services which are wallet services, payment and transfer, and the financial services. It will be difficult for us to give you the breakup of these ones. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of our question and answer session. I will now hand back to management for closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

I would like to thank you all for joining this call and I look forward to speaking to you again at the time of our full results. Thank you very much once again.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that then concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.