MTN Group will book a material impairment against its 49% stake in Irancell in its results for the six months to June, the company said in a trading statement ahead of interim numbers due on 24 August. The writedown pushes statutory earnings sharply lower even as the group’s underlying operating performance improved.

Impairment losses of R2.13/share, up from R1.04 in the first half of 2025 and relating to the Iran operations, are the main reason MTN expects earnings per share to fall 20-30% to between R3.77 and R4.31. Headline earnings per share are expected to be between R5.80 and R6.45, a decline of up to 10%.

The group’s preferred measure tells the opposite story. Adjusted headline earnings per share, which strips out impairments, hyperinflation and foreign-exchange effects, is expected to rise 18-23% to between R7.75 and R8.08. MTN attributes the gap to R1.78 of non-operational items, including R1.26of forex losses and 52c from hyperinflation accounting.

The company described the impairment as a consequence of “geopolitical and economic conditions as well as the war in Iran during the period”. This understates how long this asset has been a problem, and how little the war changed about MTN’s ability to do anything with it.

MTN has not extracted capital or dividends from Iran since May 2018, when the first Trump administration reimposed sanctions after leaving the nuclear deal. Group CEO Ralph Mupita has previously described the holding as a “frozen asset”, saying money could move neither in nor out. The stake has generated profits MTN cannot touch – the company put its share of 2025 Irancell earnings at $136-million, none of it repatriable.

The impairment, in other words, does not mark the loss of something MTN was using. It marks the accounting acknowledgement of something that stopped being usable years ago. What the war did was remove any remaining basis for carrying the stake at its previous value.

Catastrophic

The scale of the reappraisal is easy to miss behind the per-share figure. On MTN’s own account before the conflict, Iran represented roughly 4% of group net assets and about 7% of adjusted headline earnings – modest, but not nothing, and now substantially written down.

The first half of 2026 was catastrophic for Iran and, by extension, for any notion that MTN might realise value from Irancell any time soon. A US and Israeli air campaign struck targets across the country. Control of the operator, already outside MTN’s hands, passed further into those of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a US-designated terrorist organisation, after the majority shareholders replaced the chief executive in January over a delay in carrying out a state-ordered communications shutdown.

MTN holds 49% of Irancell. The remaining 51% sits with Iranian state and defence-linked entities, and MTN has repeatedly said it has no operational control and does not benefit from the investment. It has been trying to exit since 2020 and has found no mechanism to do so, because sanctions prevent both the movement of money and the sale of the shares.

Writing the asset down removes a valuation problem but not the legal and reputational ones attached to it:

MTN disclosed in August 2025 that it is the subject of a US department of justice grand jury investigation covering its former Afghanistan business and its Irancell stake.
It is separately defending litigation in the US under the Anti-Terrorism Act brought by families of more than 500 American service members, who allege the Irancell investment channelled benefit to the Revolutionary Guard. MTN denies wrongdoing and says the plaintiffs have sued the wrong party.
Turkish operator Turkcell is pursuing a separate multibillion-dollar claim alleging the original Iranian licence was obtained through bribery, which MTN also denies.

The improvement in the underlying business is real, and set out separately in the group’s recent South African and pan-African disclosures. But the headline this period will belong to Iran, an asset MTN has wanted rid of for six years and now has to write down without being able to sell. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media