Capturing the growth opportunity while retaining the flexibility and resilience to manage foreign exchange and macroeconomic volatility

We saw improvement in both operating and financial performance throughout the year, demonstrating the effective execution of our strategy. Despite the challenging macroeconomic environment in a few of our key markets, we continue to see strong demand for our services as we enable connectivity and facilitate access to the digital economy. As a result, our two strong growth engines of data and Airtel Money recorded revenue growth of around 30% in constant currency.

Revenue in reported currency for the year ended March 2025 declined by 0.5%, although Q4'25 revenue growth accelerated to 17.8%. During the year, the Nigerian naira remained fairly stable at around 1,530 per US dollar, although in the prior year, we witnessed a significant devaluation in the naira (from 461 naira per US dollar as of 31 March 2023 to 1,303 naira per US dollar as of 31 March 2024). In constant currency, revenue grew by 21.1% with Q4'25, growth accelerating to 23.2% driven by strong execution and the Nigeria tariff adjustments described in our Nigeria business review.

Underlying EBITDA in constant currency grew by 18.1% with full year underlying EBITDA margins of 46.5%. In reported currency, underlying EBITDA for the year declined by 5.1% to $ 2,304m as a result of the continued impact of the significant naira devaluation and rising inflation in the prior period.

During the year ended 31 March 2025, Malawi met the requirements to be designated as a hyperinflationary economy under IAS 29 ‘Financial Reporting in Hyperinflationary Economies’. This has resulted in a $18m reduction in operating profit, a $26m net monetary gain relating to hyperinflationary accounting and a $20m increase in deferred tax, resulting in a net $12m decrease in profit after tax. On the balance sheet, non-monetary net assets and, correspondingly, equity increased by $514m (including an opening balance sheet adjustment of $308m as of 1 April 2024).

During the year, we renewed tower lease agreements with ATC and IHS for approximately 8,300 sites across Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia and for a period of 10 to 12 years. The renewals ensure we continue to benefit from contract structures, including the proportion that is linked to foreign currency. Under IFRS16 accounting standards, the extension of these agreements resulted in a $1.3bn increase in lease liabilities.

Leverage has increased from 1.4x to 2.3x primarily arising from the increase in lease liabilities and lower underlying EBITDA due to the continued impact of the prior year’s currency devaluation and inflationary pressures. To reflect the Group’s financial market debt position and reduce volatility associated with lease accounting under IFRS 16, we have introduced ‘lease-adjusted leverage’ as an additional APM in the current reporting period. Lease-adjusted leverage increased from 0.7x to 1.0x reflecting lower lease-adjusted underlying EBITDA due to translation impact of currency devaluation and inflation and an increase in lease-adjusted net debt.

Our four main financial objectives remain broadly the same

1. Growing our operating profitability

We continued to see sustained operating momentum delivering high double-digit revenue and underlying EBITDA growth in constant currency. Q4’25 underlying EBITDA margin accelerated to 47.3% from 45.3% in Q1’25, following strong execution of our cost efficiency programme and a relatively stable operating environment. However, due to the continued impact of currency devaluation witnessed last year, particularly in Nigeria, full year operating profits in reported currency declined by 11.1%.

2. Investing for the future to drive sustained levels of growth

We invested $670m of capex (excluding licence renewal and spectrum acquisitions) in 2024/25 to improve network capacity and quality, and to reinforce a future-ready network. Our investments also prioritised IT and cybersecurity to further protect our business from the global threat of cyberattacks, focusing on the areas of application, network and API security. The investment in digital applications is designed to enhance customer experience, and also reflects our focus on directing investments into areas which have the largest potential for revenue growth. Capex investment in the year is lower than our guidance primarily due to a deferral of data centre investment. We also invested $127m in licence renewals and acquired spectrum to further enhance our growth aspirations.

We monitor the effectiveness of our capex investment through our financial KPI ‘return on capital employed’. Return on capital employed of 19.6% is lower than the prior period on account of lower underlying EBITDA (as explained before) and an increase in capital employed due to the tower lease renewals.

3. Strengthening balance sheet through localisation of OpCo debt

We repaid our last outstanding US dollar bond in May 2024 without taking any additional debt at HoldCo and have been actively reducing our foreign currency debt exposure, having paid down $702m of foreign currency debt over the year. We continued to localise our OpCo debt, with over 93% of this debt (excluding lease liabilities) now in local currency, up from 83% a year ago. Key benefits of localising debt at the OpCos is to protect against foreign exchange volatility and mitigate against the risk of foreign exchange liquidity constraints to repay foreign currency debt.

4. Returns to shareholders

Returning cash to shareholders through our progressive dividend policy remains a key priority. In line with our dividend policy, we paid an interim dividend of 2.6 cents per share in December 2024. Furthermore, the Board recommended a final dividend of 3.9 cents per share, making a total dividend of 6.5 cents per share, which is an increase of 9.2% compared to the prior year. In addition, following completion of our first $100m buy-back, in December 2024 we launched a second share buy-back programme that will return up to $100m to shareholders. The first tranche of this buy-back ($45m) was completed on 24 April 2025.

Basic EPS at 6.0 cents compares to negative 4.4 cents in the prior period. The prior period EPS was impacted by derivative and foreign exchange losses in key markets, most significantly in Nigeria and Malawi. EPS before exceptional items was at 8.2 cents, declining 19.2% compared to 10.1 cents in the prior period largely due to higher finance cost arising on account of the tower contract renewals, which had neutral to positive impact on cashflows, and a deferred impact of prior period currency devaluation.

Outlook

The market in which we operate has enormous potential for future growth in mobile services, home broadband, mobile money services and data centres, with a vibrant economy and youthful population. We continue to focus on strong revenue growth, margin improvement and the strengthening of our balance sheet. Tariff adjustments in Nigeria will enable us to continue investing in network infrastructure, expanding coverage and delivering improved products and services that meet the evolving needs of our customers.

We're encouraged by the recent signs of lower macroeconomic volatility across the region, but we remain focused on the execution of our strategy to reduce the impact that further economic uncertainty may have on our business outlook. Our capex outlook (excluding licence renewal and spectrum acquisition) for next year is around $725m to $750m, which includes additional investment in our data centre and home broadband businesses.

Jaideep Paul
Chief financial officer

7 May 2025