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MTN Group is making more money from its core telecom business, but its profits are heading in the opposite direction. Africa’s largest telecom operator expects headline earnings per share to fall by as much as 30% in the first half of 2026, even as its underlying earnings rise by up to 23%. The reason is Iran. A large impairment on MTN’s 49% stake in Irancell, an Iranian telecom operator, alongside foreign exchange losses and hyperinflation, is dragging down headline earnings despite stronger underlying performance, according to the company’s trading statement on Tuesday. MTN’s underlying earnings are expected to rise by up to 23%, but a write-down on its Irancell investment, compounded by hyperinflation and foreign exchange losses, is dragging reported earnings lower. MTN said it took a material hit on its 49% investment in Irancell because of geopolitical and economic conditions during the period, including the war in Iran. The impairment losses accounted for 213 cents of the difference between H1 2026 earnings per share and headline earnings per share, compared with 104 cents a year earlier. The Group also recorded 178 cents in non-operational items, up from 12 cents in H1 2025. These included a 52-cent impact from hyperinflation and 126 cents from foreign exchange losses. The result is a sharp decline in reported earnings per share that does not directly reflect the performance of MTN’s underlying telecom operations. Still, MTN said it expects earnings per share for the six months ended June 30 to come in between 377 cents and 431 cents, down 20% to 30% from the 539 cents reported in H1 2025. But that decline masks a stronger underlying performance. MTN projects adjusted headline earnings per share, which the company considers a better measure of operating performance, to rise 18% to 23%, from 657 cents in H1 2025 to between 775 cents and 808 cents. “Overall, the MTN Group delivered a resilient performance, with strong commercial execution and disciplined capital allocation in the period,” the company said in its statement. MTN also reported strong Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) margin expansion, free cash flow growth and cash upstreaming to the Group. MTN said its operations in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda delivered “solid operational performance” during the first half. Nigeria remains an important growth market, but its fintech business is facing pressure. MTN believes this was partly driven by the regulatory suspension of airtime lending. MTN’s South African business is facing tougher conditions. The group said the country’s prepaid market remained challenging in Q2 2026, particularly for voice revenue. “As previously communicated and expected, the South African prepaid market continued to be tough in Q2 2026, specifically on voice service revenue,” MTN said. MTN is making progress on its proposed IHS acquisition. IHS shareholders voted in favour of the deal on August 4, giving MTN the required two-thirds majority to acquire the 75.3% of IHS it does not already own. The transaction would take MTN’s stake to 100% and result in IHS being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. The company said it expects to publish its full interim results on or about August 24. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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IHS Towers, Africa’s largest independent telecommunications tower infrastructure company, grew its revenue by 8.2% in the first half of 2026, but higher diesel and power costs, along with expenses related to its proposed takeover by MTN Group, put pressure on its profits. Revenue from continuing operations rose 8.2% to $844 million in the six months to June, compared with $780.3 million a year earlier. Revenue also grew 10.4% in the second quarter to $428.6 million, according to the company’s H1 financial report. The results show how rising diesel costs are putting pressure on IHS’s profitability, making cost control increasingly important as the company prepares for its proposed takeover by MTN. Operating income fell 38.4% year-on-year, while net income rose 10.3% in the first half compared with H1 2025. However, IHS swung to a $7.5 million net loss in the second quarter. A major reason was the rising cost of powering its towers. Diesel prices in Nigeria increased sharply during the first half of the year, from an average of ₦1,361.57 ($0.999) per litre in January to ₦3,277.47 ($2.41) in May in some parts of the country. That rise in diesel prices fed directly into IHS’s power costs. The company spent $205.4 million on power generation, primarily diesel, in the first half, up from $165.4 million a year earlier. IHS said the increase was partly driven by higher global energy prices and geopolitical tensions. “We incur capital expenditure in relation to the maintenance of our towers and fiber equipment, which is non-discretionary in nature and required for us to optimally run our portfolio and to perform in line with our service level agreements with customers,” the company noted in its report. Merger-related expenses also added to the pressure. IHS recorded $83.1 million in accelerated share-based payment and long-term employee incentive expenses during the first half, linked to the proposed MTN acquisition and the company’s asset sales. Despite these pressures, adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA), a measure of the company’s underlying operating performance, rose 2.6% to $514 million. The company also benefited from the stronger naira when its Nigerian operations were converted into dollars. The currency movement added $40.7 million to second-quarter revenue and $22.6 million to adjusted EBITDA compared with the same period last year. However, underlying revenue growth was weaker. Organic revenue declined 0.6% in the first half as gains from new tenants, new sites and lease changes were offset by lower foreign exchange-related revenue and the loss of some sites. IHS said about 1,050 sites were vacated following the renewal of its contract with MTN Nigeria. The company is also reshaping its business ahead of the MTN takeover. IHS shareholders approved MTN’s proposed $8.50-per-share cash acquisition in August. The deal is still subject to the remaining regulatory and closing conditions. “The proposed acquisition of IHS Towers by MTN, an important step in the Group’s evolution, was recently approved by our shareholders and remains on track to close in 2026, subject to the remaining closing conditions,” said Sam Darwish, IHS Towers Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. In May, IHS sold its 51% stake in Brazilian fibre company I-Systems to TIM S.A, a Brazilian telecommunications company, for $183 million in gross cash. In August, it completed the sale of its Brazilian and Colombian tower operations, covering about 9,000 sites, to Macquarie Asset Management for an enterprise value of about $952 million. The sales mark IHS’s exit from Latin America and leave the company focused on its African operations. As of June 30, IHS operated 37,672 towers across seven countries, although its tower count was down by 1,512 from a year earlier, largely because of the sale of its Rwanda operations. IHS ended June with $1.5 billion in total liquidity, including $1.09 billion in cash and $407.1 million in unused credit facilities. It had $3.11 billion in total borrowings. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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Nigeria collected an average of ₦127.83 billion ($93.98 million) in taxes every day between January and July 2026 as new laws and digital systems helped the government bring more economic activity into the tax net. Tax collections reached ₦27.1 trillion ($19.93 billion) in the first seven months of 2026, according to data shared by the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), the country’s tax agency. The increase in collections puts Nigeria on track to raise more tax revenue in 2026 than it did in all of 2025, while new tax laws and digital systems give the government greater visibility into how much Nigerians and businesses earn, spend, and move. In seven months, the NRS has already collected 95.76% of the ₦28.3 trillion ($20.81 billion) it collected throughout 2025, and has reached two-thirds (66.57%) of its ₦40.71 trillion ($29.93 billion) revenue target for 2026. The NRS attributed the increase to the “digitisation of tax systems, four new tax reform laws, the transformation of the revenue service and an executive order that closed loopholes in the system.” In 2025, President Bola Tinubu signed four new tax laws, changing the framework for administering, collecting, and enforcing taxes in Nigeria. The reforms came as the government sought to raise more revenue from an economy where oil could no longer be relied on as heavily as it once was. The four tax laws signed in 2025 outlined new rules for administering and collecting taxes, including a legal basis for using technology to automate tax assessment, collection, and information gathering. “A relevant tax authority may deploy technology to automate tax administration processes including tax assessment, collection, accounting and information gathering,” part of the Tax Administration Act read. In 2021, the NRS, then called the Federal Inland Revenue Service, launched TaxPro Max, a platform that allows taxpayers to register, file returns, make payments, and download tax clearance certificates online. Since August 1, 2025, businesses with annual turnovers above ₦5 billion ($3.68 million) have been required to integrate their invoicing systems with the NRS platform for real-time validation and reporting. “Leveraging technology, such as the automated tax administration system (TaxPro Max and E-services) to further simplify tax processes, drive voluntary tax compliance, increase revenue collection, and create a tax environment that is conducive for taxpayers to fulfil their tax obligations,” the government explained in a policy paper. In July, the NRS told TechCabal that large taxpayers were already under compliance monitoring, while medium-sized businesses began mandatory onboarding in July 2026. Emerging businesses will follow in 2027 as part of a three-year phased rollout. Nigeria is looking to mirror the success of countries such as Rwanda, which digitised its customs process through the Electronic Single Window, and Kenya, which uses its iTax platform. The ₦127 Billion Clock Nigeria collected an average of ₦127.83 billion daily between January and July 2026. Select an illustrative public project below to see the elapsed time required for the government’s tax engine to collect an equivalent amount. Per Day … Per Minute … Per Second … Choose an illustrative project: Primary Health Centre — ₦150m 1MW of Solar Infrastructure — ₦1.2bn 1km of Paved Road — ₦1.5bn Annual Minimum Wage for 10,000 Workers — ₦8.4bn Time elapsed to collect this amount — The bigger story is not the clock. A fast collection rate improves government revenue without automatically closing the gap between what it earns and what it spends. The clock shows scale, not fiscal solvency. Despite hauling in roughly ₦1.48 million every second, the government must still borrow to balance its budget. As the Minister of Finance noted, for every ₦6 the government targets in revenue, its expenditure demands ₦10. Data: Nigeria Revenue Service (January–July 2026 Average) / TechCabal. Project costs are illustrative. Tax revenues are pooled and not explicitly earmarked for individual projects. The taxman can see more of the money In July 2025, TechCabal reported that the NRS, then the FIRS, had developed a real-time portal to track Value-Added-Tax-eligible electronic transactions and was requiring banks, card schemes, fintechs, and payment service providers to integrate with the system. In August 2025, the Federal Government said the portal had been introduced as part of the Transaction Monitoring System (TMS). To give the TMS access to more of Nigeria’s payment system, which processed more than ₦1.2 quadrillion ($882.26 billion) in 2025, the Central Bank of Nigeria in March 2026 mandated all licensed Payment Solution Service Providers (PSSPs) and Switches and Processing Operators to integrate with the system. VAT collections increased by 9.98% in the first quarter of 2026 to ₦2.42 trillion ($1.78 billion), according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The point of a more aggressive and efficient tax system is ultimately how it affects everyday economic activity. But higher revenue collections have not eliminated the government’s need to borrow, with Nigeria’s debt stock reaching ₦159.35 trillion ($117.16 billion) at the end of March 2026. Taiwo Oyedele, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, said on July 20 that higher revenue collection does not necessarily eliminate the need to borrow when expenditure requirements remain higher than available resources. “We look at all our numbers and say that we can generate ₦6. ₦6 is our revenue target; our expenditure is ₦10,” Oyedele said. “If we end up generating ₦7, we will say we have exceeded our revenue target. It is not a lie. But we still need ₦3 to balance the budget because we need to spend ₦10. So this is the reason why both can co-exist. The government can exceed the revenue target and still have to borrow.” The numbers show that the government is getting better at identifying taxable activity and collecting revenue. The harder question is when that additional revenue will be enough to reduce the government’s reliance on borrowing and, eventually, translate into better public services. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders
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