Tigo earnings soar in first quarte

Tigo Tanzania 

By Citizen Reporter

In Summary

Revenues jumped from $1.405 billion during the last quarter of 2014 to $ 1.709 billion during the quarter ending March 2015, according to information posted on the company’s website, a translation of which, was availed to The Citizen in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

Dar es Salaam. Tigo’s parent company, Millicom, registered a 21.6 per cent growth in revenues during the first quarter of the current calendar year, with the Tanzanian outfit contributing massively to the returns.

Revenues jumped from $1.405 billion during the last quarter of 2014 to $ 1.709 billion during the quarter ending March 2015, according to information posted on the company’s website, a translation of which, was availed to The Citizen in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

In Tanzania, the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm-listed firm has a 27-per cent subscription market share, according to figures released by Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA).

As of December 2014, Tigo had 8.6 million subscribers against 11.8 million and 9.5 million for Vodacom and Airtel respectively. The company has operations in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay, Bolivia and Colombia in Latin America while in Africa Tigo operates in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal and Tanzania.

According to the statement however, the increase in the 2015 first quarter revenues were driven by Tanzania, Colombia, Chad and Honduras operations, mainly due to an increase in data penetration.

Overall data penetration increased to 27.6 per cent of its mobile customer base, thanks to the availability of affordable smartphones, targeted data products and packages like Tigo Music in Tanzania, Ghana and in Latin America as well as Internet.org in Colombia, Guatemala, Tanzania and Paraguay.

“Millicom’s customer base in Africa grew in Q1 with more than 737,000 net customers, particularly in Tanzania where the number grew by 508,000 and Chad where some 280,000 new subscribers joined the network while DRC declined as we focused our commercial efforts on ARPU [average revenue per user] growth rather than customer intake,” said Mauricio Ramos, CEO, Millicom, who is in his second month at the helm of the company. Arpu is the average revenue generated per customer of an operator or service provider.

With 508,000 new subscribers in Tanzania, the firm’s revenues grew by 18 per cent to $92 million, according to the statement.