MTN Group CEO Phuthuma Nhleko has offloaded more than 3,2m shares in the mobile telecommunications group. The shares have netted Nhleko a cool R424m. The sale comes just months before Nhleko is due to leave the group
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MTN chief marketing officer Santie Botha has quit after seven years at the cellphone group. She’s leaving to “pursue new endeavours”, according to a statement. Botha was appointed to MTN’s board in 2003
MTN president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko has described suggestions that India’s Bharti Airtel poses a big threat to the JSE-listed telecommunications group’s interests in Africa as “exaggeration and oversimplification”. Analysts this week raised concerns that Bharti, which recently acquired Zain’s African assets, could start a price war with MTN in several key markets, including Nigeria.
Telecommunications group MTN faces tougher times in the 20 territories in which it operates outside SA as regulators across Africa and the Middle East begin to flex their muscles. Outgoing group president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko says operators across the region are facing tougher regulations.
MTN SA appears to have put the worst of its troubles, including its damaging billing-system problems, behind it and has gained market share in the past six months on the back of a jump in prepaid subscribers. Data revenues have leapt higher as demand for broadband Internet access continues to grow and the group has revised its full-year SA subscriber expectations sharply upwards on the back of a strong first-half performance.
The board of Africa’s largest mobile phone operator, MTN, should be in a position to announce the name of the group’s new CEO “within the next month or two”. That’s the word from outgoing CEO Phuthuma Nhleko, who was speaking during question time at the presentation of the group’s interim financial results in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Phuthuma Nhleko, group president and CEO of JSE-listed emerging markets telecommunications group MTN, has not completely given up on the idea of concluding another big acquisition. “Though we realise there are far fewer opportunities out there, we cannot afford to be inactive because the terrain is changing all the time,” Nhleko told analysts at the group’s interim results presentation in Johannesburg on Thursday.
As MTN’s outgoing president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko prepares to present his final interim results set on Thursday, analysts are hoping the group’s board will announce his successor at the same time. At the beginning of March, MTN made the surprise announcement that Nhleko had decided to step down and would leave the group by March next year.
MTN, Africa’s largest mobile operator, has invested R22m to develop a power-generation plant that it says will halve its electricity costs. The new plant, which MTN dubs the “tri-generation plant”, will be driven by methane gas, which is plumbed directly into the plant from a gas pipeline 5km away from its head office in Fairlands, west of Johannesburg.
MTN says it will have to start investigating options to improve cash returns meaningfully to shareholders as the emerging market telecommunications sector matures.
That’s the shock assessment of the cellular group’s outgoing president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko. Nhleko will address the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday afternoon, giving shareholders a peek at what they can expect to see at its interim results presentation next month.