Mtn Group Ltd Ord

Good afternoon to everybody and welcome to the Innovation Center and for those online to our 2025 full year financial results. My name is Tato Mutlante and I look after the Group Investor Relations. Welcome to all of those who've come into the room in the Innovation Center and all those who are on our platforms, YouTube, LinkedIn, and particularly our MTM colleagues across our markets who make all of this possible. Before we get into the order of business for today, let's just run through the usual housekeeping. First of all, you should be seeing our disclaimer and safe harbor. That covers really the presentation for today. And for those physically in the room, please note that we do have the emergency exits. Just to remind you, we're all about health and safety. There's one at the top left in terms of how I'm facing, and to my right as well. For connectivity, you should be seeing the WiFi details. I'll just give you a second to connect if you haven't already. And then on the social networks, if you plan to share some of the updates online, please do use our hashtag, which is MTNAnnuals25. You can tag our corporate accounts at MTNGroup on X and at MTN on LinkedIn. And there's also a QR code for the full results booklet on display. Again, I'll just give you a second to scan if you haven't already. Finally, and this is the good stuff, those who are here physically, we do have refreshments afterwards. Please do join us. We've got some good stuff for you. And as we turn to the business of the day, I think today's presentation is covered under the theme Accelerating Impact, Empowering Africa. So this really comes at an important time for MTN as we look at the 2025 results. We also think about the impact that MTN makes on our nation states and the peoples of the continent. And it really gives us inspiration as we move forward and the many things that we look forward to doing. With that context in mind, let me just turn to today's agenda. You'll see on the screen, we'll run through the usual order with a little bit of a tweak. We'll start with the FY highlights that Ralph will run through, and he'll also cover some operational and strategic highlights. Sulu Sulu who is our CFO will come and do the financial performance before handing back to Ralph he'll run us through a strategy transition to ambition 2030 before he concludes with some priorities that we have for the year just a reminder for all of those who are on the platforms particularly the webcast please do use that platform for Q&A just post them on that platform and they will be read out And just as we get into the business of the day, it is my pleasure to welcome our Group President and CEO, Ralph Mupita. Thank you.

Thanks very much and good afternoon to all of you who have joined us here at 14th Avenue, our home here at MTN, and those who are joining us on the various media platforms, and to the MTNers who have delivered the results that Sula and I have the pleasure to share with the broader investment community, media, as well as broader stakeholders. I trust you've had an opportunity through some of the opcos. We've seen a really good turnaround in the market like Zambia. Strong results coming into Cameroon, so a very strong commercial performance, driven by us focusing on driving leading customer experience. Today, you've got to fight for the customer, and supported by material investments that we've made into our network, close on to R38 billion ex-leases is the amount of capex we've put into our networks. and so the commercial performance has been excellent as I mentioned earlier. We've had a relatively benign macro in the last 12 months. We saw currencies quite stable and actually strengthen in some regard particularly the CDII and Naira also pulled back from the very high devaluation levels it was at. and we saw inflation start to moderate across markets. So the underlying strong commercial performance translated into very strong financial results as Zulu will share, strong earnings, strong free cash flow and returns above our own guidance. The third message is really around shareholder remuneration and starting with last year's dividend we have declared the board has declared 500 cents per share as dividend. We had indicated in our open policy framework for dividends of 2025 and before that we would do a minimum of 370 cents. So through the strong cash generation that we've been able to deliver, we're pleased that we're able to declare the 500 cents, so that's 45% above the prior dividend of 345 cents. We're also announcing with the results and the sends an enhanced shareholder remuneration framework that encompasses both cash dividends and share buyback, and I'll come back to that a little bit later. Number four, we now at the end of 2025, we came to the end of Ambition 2025. We're looking to the next five years and are announcing that we are pivoting to Ambition 2030, which is essentially streamlining the execution that we had, but fundamentally still the same strategy that is... We are driven by an investment case that says there is a significant digital and financial inclusion opportunity across our markets. And the fifth is that we are reaffirming our medium-term guidance. We've made tweaks to the return metric as well as to leverage metrics which I'll come to a little bit later. So in terms of commercial momentum, we crossed over the 300 million subscriber mark. We ended the year just over 307 million subscribers across our market, seeing very strong net additions, particularly in the second half of the year. So H2 much stronger than H1, and so we saw that growth in not only subscribers, but also active data subscribers. This is the data era, and we're seeing data subscriber growth. So coming back to subscribers, we pretty much were adding in the last five years 10 million subscribers per year. That's been very pleasing for us to see that growth being sustained. And you can see there in the data traffic, which gives you a sense of the demand, for our solution that that's grown at about 27%, 24.7 petabytes of data that have come through in our network in 2025. On the fintech side, again, strong growth that we've seen. Monthly active users just shy of 70 million. But I think it's quite impressive how much of the transaction value that is moving through that platform. $500 billion of transaction value. And when you look at it on a constant currency basis, just under 38% reported basis is more like 55%. So a lot of transaction that is going through the MTN network at the moment. So very strong commercial performance we've seen in 2025. As I mentioned, that translated into very strong financial results. And if I start with service revenue, and Sulu will break down the service revenue barriers a little later, the 22.7% constant currency service revenue growth is the best that we've had since 2008. So it's been a long time coming to see the level of growth in a constant currency at those pleasing levels and materially well above our own guidance and also well above inflation. Inflation across our markets was more around the order of about 13% on a blended basis. So almost 10% headroom of service revenue delivered against the blended inflation in our markets. Just focusing on the return metric, as I mentioned, earnings very strong, adjusted headline earnings per share, above 67%. You see it there on the screen, $0.1359 per share. And then operating free cash flow also coming on strong, showing growth of almost 82%. And as I mentioned, our return metric, which we've used, up to 2025 above our guidance of 25%. So very pleasing to see that. And as I mentioned, the dividend declared, which will be paid in April, is 500 cents per share. Talking about the enhanced shareholder framework which has been sometime a work in progress, we did communicate in 2024 when we had the challenges in Nigeria of a rapidly devaluing Naira and escalating inflation and the impact that had on our leases and we went into negative equity. We set forward our five point plan and at that stage we had conversations with the investment community that at the point in time that we had restored distributable reserves in Nigeria and secondly that we were confident that we're able to procure dollars for dividend repatriation, we would come back to the market with an enhanced shareholder framework which is what we announced with our results. And this medium term shareholder remuneration framework has a couple of elements that I hope I can describe them super clearly to yourselves. The first is that we're looking at an annual distribution of 40 to 60% of equity free cash flow as shareholder remuneration. Within that construct, we're going to have a minimum cash dividend of 40% of that equity free cash flow. We will look to a further 20%, which could be as cash dividends or as part of a buyback program. In terms of a buyback program, the Board has approved a buyback program. over a three-year period of R6 billion, which we will look opportunistically to acquire our shares and permanently cancel those shares. And if you look at where our share price is today and you look at shares outstanding, that's approximately like 1.7 for those who want to round up 2% of outstanding shares that would look with that program and obviously once we complete we can have a relook of whether we want to further you know increase that program and obviously we want to execute all of this within our capital allocation framework which were further simplified to have four pillars which I'll talk to a little bit later just moving to the operational results let me start off with South Africa and I wanted to start off with the market context of South Africa I think there are three points in market context that I would like to highlight. I think the South African consumer in SA has been in an okay shape. Let's not say the South African consumer is in a great shape or a bad shape. Let's just say okay. But the consumer behavior that we've been seeing is that actually there's a lot of disposable income that's now going on to areas such as online gambling or gaming, if you want to call it that. And we think that this is probably a structural change, and we're seeing it across several markets where this is becoming kind of more prevalent. So it isn't a one-source, it's actually structural. As I said, the SA consumer has not been in bad shape But the competitive intensity that we've seen in the prepaid market, which we spoke about last year, we saw it continuing into the final couple of quarters of 2025. So the story of MTN SA is one of two sides. There's firstly the SA prepaid where it's under pressure. We saw service revenue there degrowth of 4.4%. It makes up 52% of service revenue. So when you have degrowth there, you've got to climb quite a bit to end up at 2% service revenue. because the consumer post-paid business and enterprise all have grown pretty strongly. So that's a market where we said with our H1 results in August that we foresaw a couple of quarters where the initiatives that we want to bring in mostly at a commercial level, sales and distribution, will take us a couple of quarters. before we start to see green shoots or getting back into growth. And I think you can anticipate that Q1 and Q2 will still be difficult for MTNSA as those initiatives start to gain traction and Ferdi, Yolanda, Dineo and the border team have their eyes very fixed on ensuring that we do see this prepaid recovery. As I mentioned, postpaid enterprise, wholesale pretty much where we expected it to be. The pressure is on prepaid, and therefore it's a focus for us. We did put in sufficient CapEx, just under $7 billion. CapEx, order of magnitude 13% CapEx to sales, which is in line with peers. And the network has had some investment, so we thought that that level of investment is sufficient to maintain a high quality network. So those are the key points I'd like to make around South Africa. Coming to Nigeria, Nigeria released results a couple of weeks ago and many of you have digested those results and fantastic set of results. And again, starting with the macro, a couple of key callouts. I think the first is the tariff increase that came at the back end of Q1. We started to see it flow through into Q2 results and so forth. Inflation started to moderate more broadly. The NARA was a lot more stable. In fact, it did appreciate against the dollar. Oil prices were in the 60s, and we'd also renegotiated the IHS contract at that time. and all those benefits from that five-point plan flowed through supported by commercial execution to deliver these stellar results that Nigeria put 55% service revenue growth, very strong growth in terms of data and free cash flow generation has been very strong. We put a lot of capex into the network. We have committed to the authorities that would also be dealing with quality of service issues. You know, the quid pro quo to get the tariff increase was to ensure that Nigerian consumers are experiencing high quality data networks. So our focus, you'll see that the CapEx intensity in Nigeria is at the top end of the range, closer to like 19%. A lot of that was to deal with QAS in several clusters, Abuja and other areas where we had picked up that there was improvement needed around the quality of service, quality of experience. But very pleasing results coming out of Nigeria. Just talking to markets more broadly, again, as I mentioned, this is a broad-based set of delivery from across the markets. SEER, which a big part of SEER is Uganda. You can see there the subscriber growth. Close on to 10%. Again, very strong Q3 and Q4 coming through. Good growth in active data subscribers as well as on our mobile money platforms, our fintech platforms, and similar dynamic that we see growth there in Weka. A little bit of pressure, particularly in Cote d'Ivoire. But Cote d'Ivoire for us has now become a business where we're starting to see the connectivity business improve. Still some challenges on the fintech business, but overall the worker results, which also have embedded in them, the GANA results coming out are pretty strong. Talking about fintech, as I mentioned, good growth, close on to 70 million monthly active users. You have a transaction value that's close to $500 billion. What has been pleasing is that the advanced services continue to grow quite rapidly at 40.5% service revenue growth. We've all said that the future of this business is going to be the advanced services. The basic services, yes, they remain important, but if you look three to five years out, you have to have a strong base of the advanced services, payments and e-commerce, bank tech, and so forth remittance, those are the services that will stand us in good stead to sustain a good investment story for the fintech business. Creating shared value has always been a key pillar and a differentiator for MTN. The way we express it and measure it is around our eco-responsibility, which is mainly around the role of reducing greenhouse emissions, Sustainable societies, broadband coverage as well as having diversity. There we're targeting women in the workforce and good governance. On eco-responsibility, good progress on scope one, scope two. So, you know, quite strong performance in terms of greenhouse gas reduction. Part of that growth that you see is 48%. Broadband coverage just a smidgen off our target of 95. We did decelerate rural connectivity in Nigeria in 2024 and a little bit of 2025. will really catch up that's the real delta there in terms of the 94 versus the 95 so pretty much there and good progress around diversity and inclusion some of you will well remember when the 45 at the beginning of the strategy was 39 so pretty much adding one percentage point every year into the workforce in terms of women representation and we're still maintaining our target to 2030 or 50%, so we're making good progress. There's always narrative around the cost of data, and I guess it will always be that narrative will be permanently with us. But when you look at effective rate per gigabyte, that's actually come down just over 14% on a blended base across our market, so giving a lot more value to our customers as well. Just against the guidance before I hand over to Zulu, we're pretty pleased with the delivery against guidance as of the end of last year. As I mentioned, SA, we're at the bottom end of our guidance range. That's why we have it as amber. FinTech advanced services growing strongly, but the basic services were a little bit lower, so we marked ourselves there amber. When I said realization, Amber, because we didn't hit the 25, but I think there's good rationale for not hitting the 25. Two big asset realizations were in the original targets. The one was selling Nigerian further down. There was another 11% still to go. So we didn't do that for good reason that we communicated last year. and then obviously IHS you know we have had a strategic re-pivot on IHS so if you take those out I think on the asset realisation a job well done by the teams that are focused on that so with this let me pass on to Tzulu and I'll be back to talk to you about strategy and outlook

Thank you very much Ralph. Good afternoon everyone joining us for this pleasing set of results. We are very pleased to present a very strong financial set of results for the full year 2025. And I think before I do that I just want to take you through some of the key messages that are coming out of these financial results and I'll unpack the themes as I walk you through the presentation. I think the first point to make here for us is that we've seen a very sustained momentum across all the key financial metrics for 2025 and this was really reflected in the strong top line growth, margin expansion and a broad based improvement across our financial KPIs. We saw further improvement in the quality of our earnings. also supported by a more stable macroeconomic environment in several of our key markets. The second point here is that we kept a very strong focus on our expense efficiency program and this resulted in a delivery of 3.6 billion in the year exceeding the target that we had set for ourselves demonstrating the ongoing structural benefits that have come with the program. Thirdly, I think as you can see our free cash flow generation has strengthened materially during the year and I will unpack this later but in short it also reflects the improved profitability as well as tighter working capital management and a continued focus on our cash discipline across the Group. The fourth highlight here, as Ralph indicated, is really on our return on equity, which surpassed our medium target of 25%, reaching 25.6%. And finally, we sustained the healthy balance sheet and financial flexibility that remain central to our operational resilience and our strategic execution. I think with that context then let me just take you through the salient points firstly in terms of the summary of our Group Financial P&L. To call out just a few on this slide here, As you can see, Group Service Revenue on a reported basis grew 22.9%, reaching R218.5 billion. And in Constant Currency, we saw a similar trend at 22.7%, which was firmly ahead of our medium-term guidance as well. And this really underscores the robust top-line performance across our African footprint. reported EBITDA increased by 64% on a reported basis with pleasing growth of 36.8% in constant currency. And this really reflected the strong revenue momentum as well as we continued with our margin expansion achieved also through disciplined cost management. In constant currency, our EBITDA margin increased improved to 44.5%, which was a 5.4% improvement. And this really translated into meaningful earnings before interest and tax, which more than doubled year on year. And this reflected also an improvement across. And I think from a constant currency perspective, from an EBIT perspective, we achieved 61%. Below the line, you will notice that our finance costs declined by about 53%, reflecting firstly prudent balance sheet management and lower FX impacts that we saw particularly in Nigeria, where we saw the stability of the Naira during the year against the dollar. There were also gains from the appreciation of the Ghana City in the year. And the underlying finance charges therefore excluding FX impact grew by 6.7% year on year. The tax expenses were up by about 190, just over 190%. and this was mainly reflecting our much improved profitability but there were also impacts from a non-deductible expense perspective and some unrecognized defect tax assets in the main. Non-controlling interest as you can see also a significant improvement due to the recovery mainly of MTN Nigeria and then at the bottom line you see attributable profit increasing to 20.3 billion, reinforcing the recovery in the earnings and the profitability across the group. And I mentioned the return on equity as well, where we saw an improvement year on year of 6.9% to 25.6%. Now, if I move on to the next slide here, just very important to show the pleasing sequential progression that we saw in our financial key metrics as we Progress into the second half of the year. I think just to call out a few KPIs here very briefly, you'll see our service revenue accelerating to 23% in the second half from 22.4% in the first half. EBITDA increase in the second half, with margins remaining robust, supported by ongoing cost discipline that I mentioned earlier. And then in terms of leverage, you'll see that the consolidated net debt to EBITDA improved further to 0.3 times by the year end, while Holco leverage reduced to 1.3 times by the year end, both comfortably within our targeted thresholds. This was also supported by very strong cash generation and upstreaming from the opcos which accelerated from 8.2 in the first half to 9.2 billion in the second half totalling 17.4 billion for the full year. Now if I can turn briefly to our two large markets starting with South Africa, overall as indicated we saw service revenue increase of 2% Data revenue grew by 4.5% year on year, while voice declined by 4.2%, which was really consistent with The competitive pressures that I mentioned in the South Africa voice market especially on prepaid and again as Ralph indicated there's plans in place to make sure that we turn this around but as we always say it's not a quick fix and these things take time but the team is well underway to make sure that we make the right progress here. Within the other service revenue bucket you can see that we saw an increase of 3.1% and this includes wholesale revenue that grew by 2.5% as well as enterprise ICT and bulk SMS growing by 8.5%. Enterprise on its own grew quite significantly by just over 13%. EBITDA declined by approximately 10% here with margins reducing from 37.4% to 34.6%, and this was impacted by higher share-based payments due to the share price movements on the staff cost line. Excluding these, EBITDA margin would have been around 35.8, an OPEX increase of just over 4% year-on-year. But I must say that MTNSA did a very good job in terms of keeping the expense growth in check, and I will share that later on as I talk about our group expenses. In terms of capital expenditure, MTN South Africa spent about $6.8 billion range during the year with capex intensity of 13.4% and the reduction is following the conclusion of the Network Resilience Program that we had back in 2024. So for the OPCO, for SA the OPCO continues to implement the initiatives that are needed as I indicated to get back on track. If I can move on to MTN Nigeria briefly, most of you will have seen the results. It's safe to say that we've seen a very strong set of results from Nigeria with service revenue up 74%, data growing by 74%, and voice also performing strongly, growing by 42%. Alongside operational execution, you'd recall the phased pricing revisions that were implemented during the year and which provided a meaningful boost to service revenue growth. And most of these benefits came through in the second half of the year. And then on the back of the top line growth, we saw EBITDA margin more than doubling as well, over 100% increase. And as a result, we saw an EBITDA margin expansion of 13.6 percentage points to almost 53%. and in terms of capital expenditure, MTN accelerated investments to 11.9 billion during the year. You'd recall that last year they had reduced in 2024, they had reduced capex by almost 53% due to the macroeconomic environment. So we're really delighted with the turnaround we're seeing in Nigeria, particularly with the resumption of the dividend and the cash upstreaming to Group. If I can just briefly touch on the FinTech business as well, I think, sorry I went straight, yeah. So just turning on to the FinTech business briefly, we saw service revenue increase by 23.2% in 2025 with advanced services around 40%. And this aligns with our strategy to grow the segment faster, which has increased its contribution overall of total FinTech revenue to now 29% from 25% last year. And this really supports the stickiness and overall quality of our ecosystem, including the benefits of profitability and the cash flow that we see. So in that regard, we've seen also EBITDA margin improvement in FinTech of 2.1 percentage points to 42.8%. I just want to touch briefly on the rest of the market's portfolio, which I think is important. You will see that we're still reporting in terms of SIA and WEKA, and as we have communicated going forward, we'll be reporting in terms of Francophone and SIA Ghana, as well as the rest of the Southeastern African regions. So in terms of the broader markets, I think the key call out here is to indicate that both SEER as well as WECA grew their service revenue above inflation and also saw a margin expansion. You will notice that SEER service revenue increased by 21% against blended inflation for the region of 12%, driven by strong growth in data. as well as FinTech and then the EBITDA margin growing to 47.5%. And within the portfolio, we've got MTN Uganda that grew service revenue at around 13.5 percentage points to 17.7 billion and with margin improvement of 1.6 percentage points. When we move to Weka you'll see that they also grew service revenue by 18.5% versus blended inflation of 8.9%. MTN Ghana once again within the Weka region led the performance with growth in service revenue of 35.9% and a margin of improvement of 3.2% reaching 60% EBITDA margin overall. So it is fair to say that overall the market's portfolio also produced brilliant results. And I think it's also worth mentioning some of the markets within our portfolios where we've seen an improvement. For instance, we've seen great, strong results in coming from Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire on the connectivity side, Sudan, South Sudan, Zambia, as well as Rwanda, where these opcos have shown a pleasing turnaround and trajectories in their financial performance. Just moving on to the group expenses which were well managed again during the financial year well below our blended inflation environment as you can see we saw total group expenses growing by 9.3% and looking at the composition of the expenses you'll see that cost of sales Operating Expenditure Increased by 13% which was also slightly below blended inflation driven mainly by employee expenses largely due to increase in the share based payments as a result of the share price appreciation. We also saw an increase on the network related cost as we continue to invest in network quality. Ltd Ltd Ltd over the three-year period since we started on EEP 2.0 in 2024. So this is really reflected in our total cost-to-revenue ratio, which improved from 61% in 2024 to now 55.6% in this year. This financial year and the majority of the savings approximately 64% of those particularly came from network and IT as we continue to drive our focus on structural efficiencies and we also saw from by market perspective a significant contribution coming from Nigeria largely due to the lease renewals and as I indicated a portion coming from MTN South Africa as well. Just to move on to our earnings per share and if I can walk you through the reconciliation to adjusted headline earnings per share, starting at the top you'll see that our attributable earnings per share improved meaningfully in the year 2025, reflecting the strong recovery in operating performance, particularly in Nigeria alongside a more stable macro environment relative to the prior year. reported attributable earnings per share for the year was 1113 cents compared to a lost position in the previous financial year. The most significant adjustment here related to impairment charges primarily associated with Goodwill, property, plant and equipment and associates which amounted to 157 cents per share in this year. You'd have seen from the M10 Ghana results as well and associated group announcement at the time the effects of an IFRS 16 adjustment relating to the prior year for the group. This related to 12 cents per share and it was largely due to the hyperinflationary impacts that rolled it up to group. After adjusting for impairments and other disposal-related items, basic headline earnings per share increased by 12.74 cents, representing a very strong year-on-year improvement. However, you will see that our headline earnings per share were still impacted by some non-operational items, and therefore, as we adjust for these, we saw an increase to 13.59 cents per share, on our adjusted headline earnings per share, which was really an increase of 67%. Just briefly on our capital expenditure, our business continues to grow, so it's important that we continue to invest for growth. We spent $38.5 billion, translating to a CapEx intensity of 17%. The increase in capex was primarily driven by the accelerated network deployment that mainly came from Nigeria as the business accelerated investment this year, as I mentioned earlier, in addition to Ghana as well, particularly also bolstered by the stronger Ghana city against the rent. From a geographic perspective, the majority of the investment was directed towards the broader markets with SEER and Weka making up a total of 47% together in terms of total to group spend and the balance of that coming from Nigeria which was 31%. and by category the major CAPEX deployment as I indicated was coming from our networks and 25% of that coming from IT systems in the main. Moving on to the free cash flow, let me now just turn into how we have fared, and this is the most pleasing result as well relative to historical trend in 2025. You will notice that operating free cash flow before spectrum and license payments increased by almost 82% to 57 billion rand, underpinned by a significant improvement in EBITDA. Disciplined working capital management and a continued focus on our cash generation across the Group. This improvement in our free cash flow generation was also delivered against a tick up in our capital investment which I mentioned previously. In the second half of the year, we also accelerated some efforts in terms of working capital management where we improved data collection across our markets and continued to optimize on our inventory and payables. And in South Africa specifically, we advanced our cash release initiatives including the ongoing handset receivables financing as well as supply chain financing initiatives. After accountings for spectrum and licenses as well as interest and taxes, we saw a consolidated free cash flow for the group up to 26.9 billion, almost 27 billion rand. This was an increase of more than four times relative to the previous year. As Ralph noted earlier on about the enhanced shareholder remuneration framework which will really be based on our equity-free cash flow, we paid about 5.3 billion rand in dividends to non-controlling interest, but this also included a 2.5 billion rand wind-up dividend relating to Zakelefuti. and this resulted in our equity free cash flow growth of about just over 380% to around R22 billion. So on the whole this represents very strong recovery in terms of cash generation compared to the prior year and really provides us with a solid foundation in terms of deleveraging our dividends and ongoing investment for growth. Now talking to the next slide which is really around our leverage and liquidity profile. It's important to highlight as we said earlier on that we have been really focused around balance sheet management and you can see that we've seen a consolidated net debt to EBITDA improving to 0.3 times now from 0.7 times same period last year. and this reflects strong recovery in EBITDA, improved cash generation and disciplined balance sheet management as I indicated. At the holding company level, our whole core leverage is now at 1.3 times which is below our guided 1.5 times that we've guided to the market and even our group leverage is way below our covenant limits. In terms of currency mix, our non-ZAR debt at Holcro level stood at approximately 16%, once again which is well below our medium term threshold of 40% for the foreign currency denominated borrowings. Cash upstreaming as I indicated 17.4 billion rand as well supported the improved leverage at Holco but also our liquidity headroom which now increased to 43 billion rand with closing cash balances of 20 billion for the year. Turning to the right-hand side of the slide, the maturity profile of our debt at Holco is now well-steaded over the next years, helping us to mitigate the refinancing risk. Our immediate focus here is also continue to refinance the maturities that are coming through in 2026. We manage our debt profile very proactively and continue to benefit strong access and support from the debt markets. And really thank you to some of our lenders for the partnerships that we've had over the years. So we are very comfortable with where we are from a balance sheet perspective. Lastly, before I hand over to Ralph, I think it is important to just highlight in terms of where we are following our ambition 2020 and as we move into 2030, which Ralph will take you through. I think to summarize, we're really encouraged to see the pleasing set of results firstly for 2025. We've delivered sustained and momentum broadly across all the elements of our key financial KPIs and earnings, very good quality earnings as well as attractive free cash flow generation and a healthy financial profile from a balance sheet perspective. We've had a framework that always aimed at looking at service revenue above inflation, so growing in real terms, and what we had from a medium-term guidance perspective was growth in heightings. with improved margins and earnings and a disciplined capital allocation approach really focusing on attracting free cash flows and driving attractive free cash flows as well as reduced leverage and I think as we can see these numbers here Supposed to say that our service revenue growth has grown at almost 17%, which over the years is above our blended average of about 14%. Had we not done all the EEP initiatives that we've done, given the shocks that we've had, We probably would not have been able to be as resilient as we could have been as a business. So we have seen an improvement in our returns to shareholders with ROE progression of about 8.6 percentage points and an average capex intensity of 17.6% overall over the five years. With that, I will hand over to Ralph.

Thanks very much. I trust that Sula has given you a flavor of what's detailed in our SENS and our annual financial statements in terms of the results. And I think you will agree that overall the results delivered were quite pleasing. Before we take Q&A, two more sections. One on strategy as we move towards 2030 and then priorities and outlook. We set out a strategy at the back end of 2019 going into 2020 looking at the structural growth opportunities that we saw, having looked and assessed where is the continent in terms of digital adoption, where is the African continent in terms of financial inclusion. And so that structural growth thesis has been the underpin for Ambition 2025. And as you see on the charts, some metrics that show you the kind of growth that we delivered. Subscribers, we're now at over 300. We started off, if we use rebates to the markets that we've exited some markets in the period. you know order of magnitude 10 million per year subscribers coming into the base active data subscribers more or less 12 million active you know net additions coming in who are regularly using data and also we've seen as I mentioned good growth in terms of FinTech just shy of 70 million monthly active users there Sulu has spoken about EEP, the progress that we've made. So we had two sets of EEP. We talk internally that Expenses are like nails, they need trimming from time to time, so I anticipate that we'll have ongoing expense initiative programs. But during the period, quite pleased with the progress that we've made. And as Sula's mentioned, the return progression has been pleasing. And our asset realization program I mentioned earlier, we didn't execute on IHS for very good reasons, you know, post their listing, and we've had a strategic pivot to bring back these towers. At the time we set out our strategy, some of you will remember that the valuation of IHS then was about 30 odd billion rand. At least our share of that value was 30 billion rand at that time. And obviously with the market conditions and revision strategy, we did not execute that. And then Nigeria, further sell down in Nigeria, market conditions were not appropriate, 23, 24, and even 20, 25. We also assessed the situation with the changes in the tax code in Nigeria and decided that we wouldn't progress with a further sell-down. Certainly at this stage we feel that's the right strategy and some of you have seen the Nigerian share price re-rate. I think probably the biggest job done is really the job to materially improve the quality of the balance sheets. We used to have 48% of the debt was hard currency, almost 50% of our debt was hard currency. and we brought it down to 16 as well as the whole core leverage well below. So broadly if you look at our strategic intent in terms of 2025 we can say when you look at it in the rounds we've been able to deliver what we promised to our shareholders and this year as we exit 2025 that you can see the quality of the results and the commercial execution therein. We still think that the themes of structural data and FinTech inclusion underpin the future of MTN and the markets we operate in over the next five years. We started just at the end of COVID tracking these cohorts of data, what's data traffic, because it's giving us a sense of demand, what's happening with FinTech transaction volumes, because it's also telling us a story about how customers are engaging with our services and new customers coming onto our platforms. In 2019, 282 petabytes in the network is now 2,234, almost an eight times increase, showing you that there is structural demand and growth across our markets. Similar average transaction volumes per quarter, 1.3 billion knots, just under six, so that's like four and a half times. So the thesis that says there is growth opportunities, the kind of growth that we delivered last year, the data showing us that that remains on track. The Group Board spent quite a considerable amount of time last year doing a comprehensive review of the strategy and looking forward to the next five years to say how should we think about the strategy. I think a couple of key call-outs here. The board endorsed the strategy as being the right one and the focus for us was to integrate certain pivots that we were seeing around customer behaviour, use of technology, where is AI going and related. But the strategy remained the right one and we needed to focus on executing with those pivots. They supported the point that there is an enduring investment case out there around digital and financial inclusion and that we want to focus all our resources on the African continent. We are calling out a further simplification of the strategy and saying we're looking at it from a three platforms. We're looking at connectivity across all our markets as a platform as we are with FinTech and now increasingly looking also at digital infrastructure and we'll be allocating capital across those businesses in line with the returns and the growth prospects that we'll see going forward. As I said, we are seeing our customers are increasingly wanting an Appified experience, so you'll see that even in our CapEx, it will evolve where the share of CapEx in that 15 to 18 will be more IT than network. to reflect the investments in much stronger customer experience and as I mentioned technologies such as AI are going to be with us over the next three to five years as well. And that we need to have an operating model that enables us to capture these structural growth opportunities and deliver value. We're not doing it for the sake of doing it, we obviously want to deliver value for our stakeholders. We are framing, as I said, under the three pillars, but importantly, the purpose of the company remains the same. We're not changing anything there. Our purpose is really to deliver leading digital solutions for Africa's progress. We want to situate our own strategy into the progress of the nation states that we operate in. We think that that's a resilient and a sustainable approach on how to take forward our own strategy. So we're talking about platforms of choice for consumers, for homes and businesses and under each of those platforms we're calling out some very specific strategic priorities and where we're going to be deploying capital to invest. Scaling data for us is not just providing the raw data but building the digital services that sit on top of connectivity you know currently our customers are doing about just over 12 gigs you know data usage per month and our customers are two to three dollar average revenue per user you go to India same two to three dollars 30 gigs Why? Because there are services being offered that enable the customers not only to pay for the data, but the services that sit. So embedded and scaled data is also our aspirations for digital services. Accelerating home. We think there is a significant opportunity in home over the next five years. A lot of the investment the last three decades has been about mobility. But over time, we think that homes is where a predominant amount of the workload covered was a bit of a wake up call for all of us about networks and investments and the ability for our customers to be connected to the Internet. and we see a material home opportunity of 20 to 30 million homes connected by MTN using different technologies, fixed wireless access where we have the spectrum and the network capacity and where we see the near-term opportunity to be deploying FTTH. So we are taking a technology agnostic approach to connecting homes. The right technology that will generate the right economics is the technology. We're not particularly precious about a specific technology. It's the one that will give the customer the right experience and we are able to be able to monetize. We're also calling out enterprises for the next three to five years. The enterprise opportunity in South Africa is being meaningfully harvested. We still think there's some growth there. But on the rest of the continent, we still believe we are right at the beginning. And we're not talking about the multinationals and large enterprises. but the small medium enterprises who we can bring to them technology that enables them to be able to meet their own aspirations think of the ladies in the market when you travel to Ghana or Nigeria selling tomatoes or clothes whatever it may be that gives them a sense of living technology on the phone should be a real enabler that's a big opportunity that we want to tap into FinTech, the strategy being clear, there is not something completely new. In FinTech, it's really about executing the priorities that we've set around, about growing and expanding the ecosystem and accelerating the advanced services On digital infrastructure, beyond fiber, we're calling out data centers. Our approach will be different. It will be one that's fit for purpose. It's not what you're seeing in the developed North or in China, but we think that with workloads that are coming out of our networks and our consumers, businesses that we operate, we need to be positioning ourselves quite thoughtfully around how we can deploy capital. and we put unlocked our value because the IHS transaction is still subject to the various approvals but if we get those approvals it will fit in as that third box under digital infrastructure All of these platforms really require across them three key drivers. Customer experience, we think today. It's important to have a great network and great technologies, but the customer must experience your service as leading. So we're talking about leading customer experience. We will leverage AI for growth. AI will evolve as electricity evolved after Michael Faraday invented electricity. No one knew all the use cases. Our use cases will come. And we want to be positioned in a way that AI is enabling us to leapfrog like mobile was a leapfrog for Africa from fixed lines. There is a potential here for a leapfrogging if we smart and allocate our capital judiciously and smartly to the opportunities that come. And then obviously creating shared value. If you operate in Africa, you must be linked in deeply with the nation states that you operate in. And we think that the shared value framework is the one that will enable us to sustain and maintain our positions as being a partner of progress for all the nation states that we operate in. We're streamlining next to the strategy of the capital allocation framework. I've just got four pillars now, one which is really around the organic growth. We'll continue to invest sufficiently to have leading network and IT positions. So, order of magnitude, think 15 to 18 percent of, you know, capex to sales is broadly sort of target, but just think of it as the way that we think about, you know, sustaining investment. The healthy financial profile, we want strong balance sheets. Strong balance sheets enable us to withstand shocks but also to take advantage of opportunities as and when they come. We spoke to the shareholder remuneration framework, a framework going forward framed on equity-free cash flow, 40% to 60%, combination of cash dividends and buybacks done opportunistically. And we've been clear about the amount we spend on buybacks to the maximum over the next three years. and we do think value-creative inorganic opportunities will remain our capital allocation framework. In the way we have assessed the IHS opportunity, it fits into that fourth bucket. It has to be value-creative and it adds to a meaningful expansion of the investment case. So if you are to judge it, you need to judge it under that pillar four. So this is simplified capital allocation framework that will use to discipline ourselves in how we deploy capital across the businesses within the investment case substantially you know remains the same which is their structural growth opportunities across our markets We as MTN uniquely positioned with the scale that we have, the assets that we have and Sulu took you through the financial framework for generating value and we're adding to it this compelling shareholder remuneration framework to thank the shareholders. you know for deploying capital we think that becomes a really important part of our financial framework and as I said creating shared value remains the underpin of how we lock ourselves in with the nation states that we operate in So we will have an opportunity. I think in or around the 10th of June, we're having a Capital Markets Day. It will be held here. I think you should anticipate the invites where we will delve into all of these areas in a lot more details and give you the confidence we have about our ability to execute the strategy and deliver value over the next three to five years. So just a few points on outlook and priorities and just starting with the outlook. We had a very benign macro. Relatively last year, but I think as we started this year, there is obviously a lot of global uncertainties. There's conflicts in the Middle East, the European conflict in Ukraine, and Russia is ongoing. There are conflicts on the African continent as we speak today, whether it's in Sudan or other areas. So we're live to these macro conditions and how we need to manage and operate in them. More recently, obviously, we've seen quite a lot of volatility around oil prices as well as all the issues that you are all familiar with with regards to what are the second order effects of some of the conflict in the Middle East and energy prices in particular. We also remain focused on managing an evolving regulatory environment. We operate in multiple countries, the regulatory context is not the same across all of the markets, so we have to remain nimble across the evolving in terms of regulatory context. And with such a macro backdrop, how are we thinking about the year ahead? And I'd like to make five key call-outs. The first is maintaining resilience in this global macro. And what does this specifically mean for us at MTN? The balance sheet, ensuring balance sheet strength and resilience, the choices we make about capital allocation expenditure, we'll always keep an eye on how do we remain resilient with a balance sheet. Supply chains supply chains. You know, we understand as this big build out of AI chipsets or, you know, or in short supply, we're getting more expensive. We are spending time thinking about the supply chain, which components of technology Maintaining the resilience we've shown over time during this period will be key. The second is sustaining the commercial momentum across our markets that we've seen. And as Tulu said, sometimes we have internal markets that we say close monitoring, we need to improve. So a market like Zambia jumped out of close monitoring. We're seeing Cote d'Ivoire showing good gains. Cameroon is going through. We want all our markets to be contributing to the overall results. There are several countries outside of Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana, and those have to deliver results in line with group expectations. So we're calling out to sustaining. South Africa, as I mentioned, big priority around the SA prepaid. It's 52% of service revenue. We have to give that into growth to be within our guidance range for service revenue and EBITDA margins. So that remains focused. Fintech is a story of execution against commercial and strategic objectives. We're not debating strategy. We are focused on the execution side. And then finally, completing the IHS transaction. That is obviously subject to shale approvals and getting through all the regulatory approvals. We've commenced engagements around some of the regulatory approvals to soft sound and engage with the third party customers of IHS but obviously the formal engagements with authorities both regulatory and shareholders and we anticipate that a general meeting will probably be called by IHS in May to get through the shareholder vote. We had also anticipated that today we'll be sharing with you the performer effects of our results and IHS. I think IHS just released results now. So once we have their results, soon as practically possible, we will share those performer effects. We won't wait until Q1 trading updates. As soon as we've done the work, you know, kind of out of cycle, we'll be able to share what those performer effects. As we said, we believe that the deal is value-creative. We are also at earnings and cash flow level and we remain convinced of that but we must put that in a form that you can all consume and be equally convinced as we are that this is a deal that fits into Ambition 2030 and will ultimately deliver value. finally medium-term guidance as I mentioned much of it remains the same we didn't want to change too many things so you can see there that the guidance is largely the same whatever we changed returns ROE now to return on capital employed and we feel that that is a better measure and even our LTI going forward will have an ROCE ex-ante measure that you will see that this you'll see in due course So that's ensuring that what we say to you and the executive team that we have, you know, meaningful amounts of the LTIs focused on delivering returns and ensuring the returns above the cost of capital. We're also focusing on net debts to EBITDA now, just again to simplify. And even with the IHS transaction, remember that the debt is not at the hold curve. It will be in a subsidiary once we conclude. So that's actually a more meaningful measure of where we'll be and we're calling out that we want to be less than one times. We are at 0.3 times at the moment. We believe that given our profile and the markets we operate in, we want to be judicious and remain below the one times for leverage. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for spending almost just over an hour listening from Sulu and I, and I think it was a little bit more extended because we wanted to talk about strategy, but I'll call on to Taito on stage and Sulu, and we're happy to take your questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ralph. Thanks very much, Zulu, for a comprehensive coverage of our results in the strategy transition. We'll probably do Q&A for 30 minutes just to make sure that we get you to the refreshments. Of course, we will engage with you over the next couple of weeks, so we've got some time to discuss in more detail. So let's start with the Q&A. I think if we start in the room, please just wait for the mic to come through. We'll start with Jonah.

Thank you. from Tech Central. Ralph, you touched lightly on the effect of the RAM shortage on supply chains. I think there are two aspects to it. The first is that in South Africa you are subsidizing devices at the low cost end. Are you absorbing those costs or how else are you responding? And then in terms of networking equipment and how far your capex will go in the coming year, how are you managing that risk?

you know on the devices in the city for this in the room a little monster that instinct for supper uh... can bring a uh... and mike in front of the and you know i guess a little monster look at his early days of the moment and we have a capex and annual capex envelope that's approved by the board what we normally do is We allow the operators to, before Q1, to spend 70%. But the other 30% we hold back so that we want to assess what is happening. But what we're saying to our teams is, yes, we are looking at, in fact, chipsets are just one category that we're looking at. There's a few SIM cards or another category where the prices have gone up quite a bit over the last couple of months. So I mean basically in the near term we're saying let's make the choices within an envelope. There's an envelope of affordability and we're asking our teams make choices within that prioritise. So it's something that we are looking at now. It's not only specific to MTN. It's a global issue. It's a real global issue and I don't know whether Charles is not here. Amit is sitting at the back there. He's super technical, so we should try and get a mic to Amit. Amit, I see you're sitting at the back there. Give us a really intelligent answer on this question.

In terms of the chipsets, we're not seeing a drastic shortage, but we're seeing the price of compute going up significantly, largely due to the better returns on the AI chipsets, so we see a constraint. The way our capital allocation works is we early release the previous year, so 25% of our total capex is made available in October. for the following year and normally we order long lead items in advance. So servers are one of those long lead items because normally it's taking six to eight weeks because they're kind of built for our specific needs and we've done that already at the end of last year. So now it's just Delta which we're not seeing as an issue. So delivery is not an issue it's just the price has gone up. And as Raoul said, we are looking at prioritization of what's key and what's non-key and obviously allocating accordingly. Freddie?

Yeah, do I sit or do I stand?

It's very more comfortable here.

So generally I'm not sure what exact handsets you were referring to but in the market itself depending on the price of the handsets you will follow what the market does in terms of do we subsidise, do we push specific handsets in the market. We've got a number of programs as well with some vendors and the structure of the handset might work differently with some, especially the lower end handsets. These are the handsets I think we launched sometime this year, the lower end 5G handset where we have a partner involved. that jointly takes it. And then we also do some off-balance sheet financing for our handsets as well. So generally we see what happens in the market, what is the demand in the market, do we want to push 4G or 5G handsets in. We haven't seen a substantial increase in the handset pricing yet. I think as Amit had said, we just anticipate that there could be a shortage. So we're planning for whatever we would need to do. Thanks.

Thanks, Freddie. Thanks, Freddie. Can we get a mic too? Okay.

at John O'Bradley from ABSA. Firstly, congrats on a great set of results. Three questions from me please. So just on the FinTech minority stake sale to MasterCard, have the numbers sort of changed? I know the valuation I think at the time was around $5.2 billion, up to $200 million from MasterCard. So has there been any change in that? And are you still looking to sort of sell further minority stakes once this deal closes? The second question, just on comments around the East Africa expansion that I saw in a few headlines. Could you maybe give some colour on how that could look? What sort of opportunities you would be looking for? Is that GSM or Fintech? And then just lastly on the SA business, I think you flagged a slowdown in extra time sales. So just what is the sort of penetration level of extra time in SA and what's the sort of level that you'd be looking for?

Yeah, so on that third question, Freddie, you'll pick it up. Let me pick up the first two. Yeah, so absolutely on the fintech side, nothing has changed. We're still working with Mastercard towards the $200 million level. we've been focusing on getting the structural separations out there complex up let's be clear because you're carving out the financials gotta go through to shareholders to create a structure that's tax-efficient gotta go through the regulators and I'm glad to say that in Ghana that's done so thanks to the the teams and the authorities and the stakeholders who enable us to do that Uganda we've far progressed we're now in the regulatory phases Nigeria there will be at the AGM, a structure being proposed for the full carve-out of what is the fintech business there, Uomo PSP, YDFS, that's coming in, it goes to the shareholder in our shareholder vote in the April AGM. Once we've done these three, which are probably the most complex, we should run through much more quickly. So no change in valuation, no change in the 200. MasterCard are aware of the process that we're going, and that's taking a bit more time. And they've been very supportive. And actually, I think they reached out to Serene a few weeks ago to say, how do we help with all the regulatory approval? So nothing has changed there. On East Africa, I think you're reading too much, Johnny, of the press. What we basically said to the press was that over time, I mean over time, that's three to five years out, we'll look at the portfolio. The portfolio is quite heavily weighted in West Africa and and actually if you take a 5 to 10 year view and you're wanting to find another 50 to 100 million customers you're going to have to be quite mature in East Africa that's not today this is a 5 to 10 year view so we don't have any plans I mean on the M&A side the IHS transaction is just going to consume us for the next 2 to 3 years So when you read those articles, read them with a level of healthy skepticism about what can be executed. This is a discussion with a journalist about what life could look in a decade's time. But in a decade's time, you know, maybe we do want a stronger East African footprint. We just don't have the capacity or the capital to pursue it right now. Freddie?

Data yield, data pricing, bundles, customer journey Resetting of Exit Time Productivity of the Channel Just on Exatime specifically, you referred to penetration. We use a number of KPIs to sort of look at the health of the base itself. One is penetration and this was sitting beyond I think 40% at this stage. We've been able to bring it We are ready to start pushing extra time. Again, some of the other matrices that we look within extra time would relate to the time of the repayment of the extra time, so percentage of the advance you give, how long does it take to We have seen some huge positive movement on this also. So on extra time I think we are at the stage or very close to the stage to really start pushing on extra time again. Of course the actual challenge is not Where does your matrix sit, but who do you identify and how much do you advance? So this is where the data analytics and the CVM campaign comes in far more. So as Rolf had said, we probably see a bit of challenge this quarter, maybe into next quarter, and then we will start seeing a substantial ramp-up. Thanks.

Thanks, David. Let's take one more in the room before we go to the webcast. Down here, down here, down here. It's Louise.

Hi everyone, it's Louise Pillay from Investec. I have a few questions. On your returns on capital employed guidance, can you maybe comment on the thinking around the specific targets? I guess what's the current base to work from? And if you can comment market by market, which markets are currently generating returns below WACC? I assume this is South Africa and for these markets can we assume that your capex intensity will be lower than the other opcos I mean how geared is this you know returns profile metric to capex intensity And for any potential acquisitions, will you only be considering targets within this Roikey range? The other maybe top and tail on that is the data centers. You've mentioned that you've got a co-investment structure with potential partners. How significant could this investment be? And will this be in your current CapEx budget? And how will this be funded, debt versus equity, if significant? And then I guess I have to ask a final question on SAP's pre-paid regulatory side of things. I mean, how are you positioning for, you know, the end users, subscriber service charter and data expiry rules? Thanks.

Yeah, Tapa, can we take... Good luck. You're asking me good luck. Louise, you're coming to the breakfast tomorrow, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think we'll pick up on your big... Can I pick up on your big ones and what I don't pick up? Let's deal with them tomorrow. Let's talk about return on capital employed. Look, I mean, we're a capital-intensive business, and I'll ask Tulu to join here. I mean, we're currently on return on capital employed. It's kind of mid-high 20s exit point for 2025. So we're calling out high 20s, early 30s. So we're really at that midpoint, kind of the high 20s, and so we'll have a range. It's really to reflect that it's not just equity that we need to deliver a return on. It needs to be also on total asset base. So you could take return on invested capital. And we did a lot of work to come up here in our last tool to join Return on Investor Capital Single Country Operator? Makes sense. Simplest. We're in multiple jurisdictions and you wouldn't realistically be able to hand on heart say I will deliver this because of the complexities there. So to your big questions, It's already about 25, 26 as the end of last year and we're calling out high 20s to 30s as our target. So we want to improve that profile going forward is the first. So I don't know if you want to add on that one.

Yeah, I mean I think Ralph has covered, I mean we considered a number of factors and exactly one of them was also we're in a multi-jurisdictional environment, very volatile environment as well. So that was the factor. We considered whether we should use return on invested capital. We ended with ROCE based on the work that we've done as well in terms of global practice. And we believe that it does give us a view of a capital intensive business still growing but obviously needing to show reasonable returns over time. So that's what it gives us. Yeah, and I think maybe on your second question, I think safe to say most of our markets are generating returns above weighted average cost of capital. There's probably, you know, one or two small markets that are not in addition to South Africa. But, yeah. I don't know if you want to touch the data center one.

Yeah, let me start with South Africa. You can take the data center one.

I mean just to finish off your question I mean on the data center one obviously we've always said that when we go into this phase we will be looking to partner going in with obviously partnerships and looking at equity capital because it's not something that we would be able to absorb on our balance sheet so that's how we are thinking about it here

Yeah, I mean, you know, on South Africa, I mean, it's below the cost of capitals. That's clear. And that's why, you know, the job that Ferdie, Deneau and Rolando have bought a team of is there's a top line, which is, you know, continue to grow a postpaid enterprise. Let's get prepaid into growth. And I think that deals with the But there's quite a lot of work to be done, also on, let's say, leases, you know, ATA leases. You know, they're quite expensive, more expensive than IHS, actually. So there's work to be done there on the balance sheet end to get that return above as well. South Africa's got quite a bit of a debt stack. That's quite historic. The question of what do you repatriate to group in terms of dividend versus interest payments, that's the work the team also have to do. It's both top line and bottom line that needs work over the next two to three years. And that's why when we came out in August last year, we said there's a two to three year fix to get returns above the cost of capital. You see we're putting, you know, meaningful capex in, but, you know, the number is more 7 billion, not 10 plus billion. It's unaffordable until we can get that return, you know, above the cost.

We might catch up on the other ones tomorrow. Let me just go into the webcast. Let me just ask three slightly different questions. The first one, on Iran, can you please give us an update on if the network is up and running, who is the CEO, and what happens to investment in Iran if the war ends or escalates or the regime changes? We'll just keep it at that. That's a lot of questions.

I think to that question, maybe just a couple of factual points. So we have a minority stake in Iran, 49%. If you double-click on that and look at this year's financial net assets, it's 4% of net assets, a small part of the business. On Earnings Adjusted Hips, it's about 7%. We have about 2 billion rand of outstanding loans and dividends that have been rolled up. So its financial contribution to the group is actually quite small. So I think that's the first point. The second point in line with the fact that we don't control it, we're a minority, is that the appointment of the CEO is made by the majority shareholders there. The normal sequence is we get consulted around the change of CEO. So very early in January, that didn't happen. So we did protest that you've changed the CEO, we know you're in control. But historically, you've asked us because we have sanctions and other processes that we want to check. So we weren't happy about all of that and we did formally protest. So as we speak today, we don't have any MTN secondees in Iran. In fact, we haven't had since the beginning of January. So they're all in South Africa and in Lebanon, three of them, so there's like zero. So the network is up or not, we don't know because we don't operate there and we don't have a way of knowing and we follow what, and we're not participating in board activities for some time there. So that's the context. In an environment where we could exit. As you know, there are US and other sanctions. Iran is kind of ring-fenced out of SWIFT and all the payments are networked since May 2018. So you can't put money in, you can't take money out in compliance with sanctions, which is our priority number one. So in an environment where we could exit, we will exit. and I think you saw what happened in Syria the sanctions got lifted and now we're busy finalizing a settlement agreement it's not a lot of money but we'll now be able to actually exit Syria because We had to abandon. Abandoning legally is not very helpful because you're still the owners of the shares. So we often hear people say, just abandon. You can abandon in a way that then causes you more harm than you would anticipate. So it's a very complicated and tricky situation. Trying to manage it best we can.

Thanks, Ralph. Another couple of questions. Please advise what the outcome of the South Sea Wholesale Pricing Review was in December 2025. 2. Please give guidance on the opcos whose margins have the highest exposure to rising global oil prices.

The markets that have diesel pass-through will be the ones most exposed to rising global prices. Wherever you have a pass-through, I think we have pass-throughs in Ghana, Nigeria, So those are the ones where the tower company just passes through what they are picking up basically at the pump. So those would be the two large markets. But importantly, for quarter one, It would be based on the exit of last year. So if there was going to be an impact, let's say in Nigeria, you'd only pick it up in quarter two. So the sequencing of the quarters and how those contracts are designed is also important. So for now, Nigeria's Q1, even where oil is right now, shouldn't be. I think in Nigeria, the other impact is the Dangote Refinery is picking up steam. So rather than simply just watching Nigeria, the global Brent and WTI prices, if you want to look at all of those, look at the diesel pump price in Nigeria that's coming out of Dangote Refinery. And what they've done now is they've taken out a lot of export licenses in Nigeria to mitigate that impact to try and bring more of local refining capacity into the market. Ferdie?

In terms of the diesel in SA, in South Africa we do the power as a service ourselves so we will pick up any exposure on the diesel side. We've been engaging broader government around this as well. We do have two refineries that I think are still up and running and then in the margin that we gave you we built in some concerns around diesel already so we do have a bit of a margin in terms of that we anticipated increases in diesel prices. On CELSI what we were able to negotiate was an above inflation increase on the pricing and then the contract also allows us to discuss other issues with them so we are still in discussions with them around technology and volumes and pricing as well but that's ongoing at the moment so the one at the end of last year that was concluded gave us above inflation increase on the pricing.

So let me just check if there's hands in the room.

Quite a few.

Hi.

Hello. Yeah. Hi. It's Myron from Metal Industries. Just first a comment on MTN. I mean, if you just take a step back and look at you guys for the last five, six years, right, you made it a much better quality company. So well done on that. I mean, whether it's the expense efficiency program, whether it's the hard currency ratio, debt ratios, You've managed to convince the regulators to put price ups when currencies fall out of bed and also getting IHS back in the fold. I mean that's a 180 degree pivot but it's a great deal from where metal industry sits. So thank you for that. Well done to you and the team for that. That's just a comment first. The second bit is as a shareholder we are greedy people. You've shown me that you're Equity-free cash flow, you're going to give us 40 to 60% of that, right? Now, equity-free cash flow, after giving minority dividends out, includes everything you have to pay, you know, cap tax, interest, tax, cost. There's nothing left to pay, so why only 40%, Ralph? Is it because, you know, you plan on, you're assuming the IHS deal happens and therefore you will de-gear with that, or... is going to somebody's pocket. There are no pockets other to go to other than that shale to be honest.

I mean I think Tulu expresses it best is that I mean obviously where we are now we also have to anticipate you know the IHS coming into the fold so the way we planned and thought through about the shale remuneration we had to kind of run ahead and see what that would do and Tulu I don't know if you want to add to that.

Yeah, I did anticipate that question, by the way. So I think the way you should look at it, you know, it's a cash dividend, 40% minimum. And as we said, you know, we will consider, you know, a share buyback based on predetermined criteria, which would be, you know, the additional 20%. So if we don't need to do a buy-buy-back, there will be additional returns to shareholders or acceleration of the debt. I think that's how you should look at it. Of course, from a group perspective, there are strategic investments that we probably need to think about at group level, including, as Ralph says, the debt repayment. So those are the things I think you must think about. Yeah, 60% to 40% maximum.

Thanks, I think I saw a couple of hands. We start with Nadia.

Hi, Nadeem, I'm from Standard Bank Securities. Just two questions from my side, very short ones. Seeing that you have, if I look at your three platform strategy, you seem to have a nascent opportunity in fintech and digital infrastructure. Now that your balance sheet is de-geared, would you look to do more acquisitions or to bolt on to the different ecosystems and infrastructures that you have in Africa just to accelerate the growth in those areas? And then secondly, just a question, an essay. I noticed that the medium-term guidance is still 35% to 37% for EBITDA margins. That seems to be quite a long way off from where we are in Q4. Could you give us any color on how you plan to get there? Thank you.

Yeah, I'll try and respond quickly. I think the three-platform strategy enables us to do exactly what you said, which is you can look at an opportunity on a platform-by-platform basis. You don't have to take the connectivity business to OpportunityWire if the fintech is compelling enough itself. So it gives us the flexibility to maneuver and say, in this market, this is the best way to arrange ourselves. So we will look at that over time. I just on a M&A basis, you're at IHS, so that's going to consume a lot of time and capital, all other opportunities that come along the way. would need to be meaningful and value-creative, whether it's fintech, digital info, or on connectivity. On SA, I mean, our point is, first of all, meet and beat the guidance before you change them. The Q4 deceleration, as we said, we took a bit of painful medicine, i.e., cut the airtime advance that has been taken into the market. That's going to be actually quite difficult. painful secondly a bit of sales and distribution investment that's eating away at the margin and that's why we said there's a couple of quarters to come before the impacts will come through so you know we did anticipate the question that says look at Q4 but Q4 has got some idiosyncrasies there as I said That's where the painful medicine was taken on ATEM advance as well as investment in distribution. You're not going to see that margin there in Q1 at the level we want it to be. And I think at the back end of Q2 maybe, certainly by Q3-5, look at the plans that Ferdi and team have. So I'd say it will be tough for a couple more quarters now, to be clear. Thank you, Ralph.

I think there was another hand up there.

Admire Terra Partners just two questions can you have an update on the DOJ issue as well as there has been reports of complaints by GRC that MTN is operating illegally in the GRC I think probably from the Rwanda network what will be the implications because they've said they've taken that to international arbitration do we expect a fine what are normally how those issues are resolved thank you

Thanks for your questions. Let me respond to them. DOJ, the investigation is ongoing and our voluntary cooperation is ongoing. So we have been cooperating them for information requests. Our lawyers meet them in the United States. So that is ongoing. So there's no material development. to share otherwise would have put it in the sense to be clear yes we are aware of the issues in Rwanda as you're probably aware there is a protocol between Rwanda and the DRC for both countries around signal spillage that at the border a signal can only travel so far it works both ways and our understanding is that in Rwanda Rura the authorities did write in November of last year to the DRC authorities to say can we meet to discuss signal spillage. Us as a group don't operate in the DRC. So our understanding is that those conversations are happening. Thanks Ralph.

Let me just take the last two questions online. Since your earlier announcement on IHS, how comfortable are you about the timeline of the deal?

The timeline is difficult to determine precisely because you've got to go through regulatory approvals and you can't force function these, but we anticipate that this should be from announcement order of magnitude about six months, colloquially six to seven months is the expected time to clear everything, but obviously that's not a precise timeline, but that's the timeline we're working towards.

And maybe just the last question. Will you still be paying semi-annual dividends? If yes, will the H1 payout be roughly similar to H2? It's an annual dividend. There's no semi-annual.

So that's why we said annual distribution.

All right. Let's close it then. Again, apologies in advance. We did have a lot to say in terms of the strategy and the evolution to Ambition 2030. Maybe, Ralph, final words?

Yeah, just two final words. Three, I mean, firstly, to thank all of you for paying attention in what was a bit of a long presentation. But as Tatos mentioned, we had strategy evolution to talk through as well. Secondly, some of the questions that we may have not answered, either writing to our IR desk, you know, Or we will pick up these questions in roadshows. Tula now will be on roadshows with Tato here in SA, the UK and the US over the next two weeks or so. So we look forward to those engagements in the various jurisdictions. The final point is with some sadness and almost tears in my eyes to say that this is Tato's last results presentation and Tato's been a stalwart of investor communication for the last seven years. He's decided to move, let's just say, offshore. I'm not so sure it's the most interesting place to go. So when he did tell us that he was leaving, I was almost in tears to say, you know, what have we done wrong? We thought like the jilted, you know, Sula and I said, you know, what have we done wrong? But anyway, we're wishing him well in his new endeavours. He starts the 1st of April. But that also gives an opportunity to welcome Roy Matuni, who will be joining us 1st of April. Some in the investment community, you know of him. He'll be joining us 1st of April. So you'll see a much more elderly, more handsome version to Tata in time to come. But I wanted to use this opportunity to express my gratitude on behalf of M10s and I'm sure the investment community on the fantastic work that Tata has done for us the last seven years. Well done, Tata. Thank you so much and for those who are staying please join us for drinks and refreshments outside Thank you