Airtel Africa Reports Strong Q3 2025 Growth, Expands Mobile and Financial Services

Airtel Africa reported a 7.9% increase in its total customer base, reaching 163.1 million users. Data penetration also continued to rise, with data customers increasing by 13.8% to 71.4 million. Additionally, data usage per customer rose by 32.3% to 6.9 GB, while smartphone penetration improved by 5.2%, reaching 44.2%.

The company attributed the continued expansion of its mobile money services to its focus on financial inclusion, which led to an 18.3% rise in mobile money subscribers to 44.3 million. Transaction values in Q3 2025 grew by 33.3% in constant currency, reaching an annualized transaction value of $146 billion.

The company also noted that data ARPU increased by 15.0%, while mobile money ARPU rose by 11.8%, leading to an overall ARPU growth of 12.0% YoY in constant currency. Airtel Africa emphasized that customer experience remains a strategic priority, supported by a 20.8% increase in data capacity, facilitated through the deployment of 2,850 new network sites and 2,600 km of additional fiber infrastructure.

Financial Performance

Airtel Africa reported revenues of $3.64 billion, reflecting a 20.4% increase in constant currency, though a 5.8% decline in reported currency due to currency devaluation. The company highlighted strong execution, which drove an acceleration in Q3 revenue growth by 21.3% in constant currency and 2.5% in reported currency.

Across the Group, mobile services revenue grew by 18.8% in constant currency, driven by voice revenue growth of 9.8% and data revenue growth of 29.5%. Additionally, mobile money revenue expanded by 29.6% in constant currency.

EBITDA for the nine-month period stood at $1.68 billion, marking an 11.9% decline in reported currency, with EBITDA margins at 46.2%. The decline was attributed to rising fuel prices and a lower contribution from Nigeria. However, the company’s cost efficiency program helped EBITDA margins expand from 45.3% in Q1 2025 to 46.9% in Q3 2025.

Airtel Africa also stated that profit after tax for Q3 2025 benefited from an exceptional gain of $94 million, driven by appreciation in the Nigerian naira and Tanzanian shilling. However, for the nine-month period ending December 31, 2024, profit after tax stood at $248 million, impacted by $57 million in derivative and foreign exchange losses.

EPS before exceptional items declined from 7.1 cents in the prior period to 6.2 cents, primarily due to increased costs related to the ATC contract renewal. Basic EPS, however, improved to 4.4 cents, compared to negative 1.6 cents in the prior period, reflecting lower derivative and foreign exchange losses.

Capital Allocation and Share Buyback Program

Airtel Africa reported capital expenditure of $456 million, representing a 7.8% decline from the prior period. The company reaffirmed that its capex guidance for the full year remains between $725 million and $750 million as it continues to invest in long-term growth.

The company also highlighted significant progress in reducing its foreign currency debt exposure, having paid down $739 million in foreign currency debt over the past year. This has resulted in 92% of OpCo debt now being in local currency, compared to 79% a year ago.

Leverage increased from 1.3x to 2.4x, primarily due to a $1.2 billion increase in lease liabilities following the extension of tower lease agreements with ATC. In response, Airtel Africa introduced ‘Lease-adjusted leverage’ as a new financial metric, which increased from 0.7x to 1.1x as of December 31, 2024, reflecting higher debt and lower lease-adjusted EBITDA due to currency translation impacts.

Following the successful completion of a $100 million share buyback program, Airtel Africa announced the commencement of a second share buyback initiative worth up to $100 million. The company stated that this move reflects the Board’s confidence in Airtel Africa’s growth potential, balance sheet strength, and consistent cash generation at the holding company level.

Sunil Taldar, Chief Executive Officer, shared on the trading update: “We have delivered an improvement in both the operating and financial performance in the last quarter driven by our refined strategy which is focussed on delivering great customer experience across all touch points. An increasingly important component of this is to provide a best-in-class network, digitise and simplify the customer journey. Our focus on speed and quality execution is enabling us to unlock the substantial opportunities for growth across our markets and business segments, where demand remains significant, resulting in a further acceleration of constant currency revenue growth to 21.3% in the most recent quarter.

We remain committed to investing for the future by expanding our distribution and network to ensure that we capture this significant growth opportunity on offer. Despite the challenging environment for many of our customers, we continue to see strong demand for our services as we enable connectivity and facilitate access to the digital economy.  The scale of data traffic growth across our markets – an increase of 49% over the last year – is testament to the investments we have made and the relentless focus on our strategy to create value for all our stakeholders.  

As we have communicated previously, our cost efficiency programme continues to deliver EBITDA margin improvements, with a further expansion of margins in Q3’25. We continue to focus on further margin improvement. Furthermore, our capital structure remains robust with just 8% of OpCo debt in foreign currency – a substantial improvement over the last year. This, together with continued confidence in the outlook for the business, has enabled the Board to announce a second share buyback programme, which will return up to $100m to shareholders.

The recent signs of currency stabilisation in some markets and the recent decision from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) regarding tariff adjustments in Nigeria are encouraging and signal a more stable and supportive operating environment. While challenges remain, these developments provide a firm foundation for growth and improved market conditions.”

See the report here Airtel Africa Q3’25_Final

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