JSE-listed MTN Group on Thursday said it expects to report a decrease in earnings for the year ended December 31 owing to impairments and net losses on disposals.

According to the company’s trading update, earnings per share will decrease more than 100% – or between -736c and -781c – from 227c in 2023 to between -509c and -554c in 2024.

MTN Group also expects its headline earnings per share (HEPS) to decline between -59% and -79%, or -186c to -249c, to between 66c and 129c for 2024, compared with the 315c reported in the prior year.

While the group expects to report a strong underlying performance for the 2024 financial year, the results remained affected by several external factors, including the negative impact of local currency devaluation, particularly the naira, against the US dollar.

“This included both translation effects and foreign exchange (forex) losses in our financials. An additional factor impacting our results is the operational challenges in Sudan owing to the ongoing conflict in the country,” MTN outlined in the trading update.

The company posted expected impairment losses of -578c in investments, goodwill, property, plant and equipment primarily related to Sudan, as well as a -36c net loss on the disposal of investments in a joint venture, associate or subsidiary.

Further impacting the results is an impairment loss on remeasurement of disposal groups of -8c and a net loss on disposal of property, plant and equipment and intangible assets of about -7c.

HEPS was negatively impacted by some nonoperational items of about -718c, including hyperinflation adjustments of about -16c; foreign exchange losses of about -598c, which includes a -399c naira depreciation impact; a deferred tax charge of -58c; and other nonoperational items of about -46c.

“We are encouraged by the relative stability of some important key macroeconomic indicators in the second half of the 2024 financial year, such as inflation and forex rates in some of our key markets.

“This provided some support to our performance in the period and we anticipate reporting a pleasing positive momentum in second-half earnings, free cash flow and holding company leverage ratio,” MTN Group assured.

In its larger operations, MTN Group expects to report an improvement in the trajectory of MTN South Africa's profitability, particularly in the second-half, as well as strong operational performances in MTN Nigeria, MTN Ghana and MTN Uganda.

“The approval of tariff adjustments by regulators in Nigeria, announced in January 2025, was a significant milestone in ensuring the long-term sustainability of our business and the telecoms industry in the country.”

MTN Nigeria has started to implement the tariff adjustments, which represent an important step towards addressing the impacts of the prevailing economic challenges on the operation.

MTN Group expects to publish its 2024 financial results on March 17.