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MTN update from their AGM

And now for something completely different, using the words of Monty Python's Great Flying Circus from the movie with that title. MTN released a notification from their AGM yesterday, with I guess a month extra subscriber details. Because the AGM release is covering the first four months of the year to end April, it might well have included an extra month if we had waited for the numbers towards the end of next week. The weaker currency is having a positive impact of course, but the group also reported strong growth in South Africa (which is part of Africa), Iran (yes, that place) and Ghana. I like Ghana, although I have sadly never been there. One day. Price competition in Nigeria impacted their growth rate, this was and still is expected to crimp margins over time. So far the company has bought back nearly a percent of all the shares in issue (0.9 percent) and the company maintains that they will have that 70 percent payout ratio. The Iran versus Europe and the US sanctions issue continues to be "managed" whilst the Turkcell claim is thought to be baseless. The stock actually did alright and continues to trade at attractive levels. Trading currently less than 11 times forward earnings and with a forward yield of around seven percent, that looks attractive to me. I suspect the discount applied to the company is twofold, one, geographical risk and two, margin compression worries. We continue to add them to our portfolios.


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