MTN Uganda chief executive officer Sylvia Mulinge. While fewer shillings came from voice calls, the company saw its online services boom. PHOTO/FILE
MTN Uganda has declared a final dividend of Shs8.5 per share for the year ended December 31, 2024, adding up to Shs190.31 billion for shareholders on record as of June 2, 2025.
In total, 2024 dividends hit Shs22.60 per share (or Shs505.99 billion), translating to an attractive yield of 8.37 percent at March 6, 2025 prices—a neat bonus slice of profit for every share held.
This follows the telecom’s profit growth. MTN Uganda's 2024 audited books show that it recorded a profit after tax of Shs641.55 billion, an impressive 30.11 percent jump from Shs493.08 billion in 2023.
This telecom is cashing in on Uganda’s tech-savvy crowd: data revenues rocketed 30.5 percent from Shs622 billion to Shs811.8 billion, while its mobile money arm zoomed up 24.6 percent to Shs924.4 billion.
This is because of a 22.4 percent surge in data subscribers (now at 10.1 million) and a 30 percent swell in smartphones on the network—thanks to savvy device financing and relentless investment in 4G, LTE, and 5G, keeping the network smooth.
Meanwhile, voice revenue is not resting on its laurels either, growing 12.7 percent from Shs1.12 trillion to Shs1.26 trillion—even if regulatory headwinds, like a 44 percent cut in local Mobile Termination Rates (MTR) to Shs26 in quarter four of 2024, put a slight dent in its pace.
As the telecom’s chief executive officer, Sylvia Mulinge noted that while the new MTR rules tried to clip the wings of voice revenue, improved bundle affordability and stronger service usage kept the flight steady.
Voice revenue—money from traditional calls—slid from 42.5 percent to 40.1 percent of total service income as digital delights such as data and fintech took centre stage.
In simple terms, while fewer shillings came from old-school voice calls, the company saw its online services boom. This digital shift was turbocharged by a hefty Shs418.0 billion investment in network upgrades, which pushed 4G coverage to a whopping 87.9 percent of the population and expanded 5G sites from a modest 37 last year to 538 today.
On the financial front, EBITDA—Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation, the metric that cuts through the clutter to show how much profit the company makes from its core operations, without the noise of financing or accounting quirks, leaped 20.7 percent from Shs1.37 trillion to Shs1.655 trillion, thanks to disciplined cost control that saved Shs72.6 billion.
This push also nudged the EBITDA margin—a percentage showing how efficiently revenue turns into operating profit—up to 52.2 percent.
All this happened against a backdrop of strong macroeconomic vibes: a 6.6 percent gross domestic product or the total value of goods produced in the country’s growth, headline inflation cooling to 3.3 percent (well below the 5 percent target), and a shilling that appreciated by 2.7 percent against the dollar, underscoring a robust economic environment that played a key supporting role in this telecom’s good financials.
The telecom’s subscribers by the end of 2024 grew by 13.3 percent to 22 million from 21.6 million in September 2024.
