Rob Shuter, MTN CEO, to step down in 2021

March 12, 2020 3:33 pm

MTN Annual Results at their head office in Johannesburg on Thursday, March 8 2018. CEO,Rob Shuter spoke at the announcement of the results along with CFO, Ralph Mupita. Pic: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg

Rob Shuter, the chief executive officer of MTN Group, will step down from his role in the company in March 2021.

Shuter announced this while presenting the company’s annual results for the year ended December 31, 2019.

Shuter’s four-year contract with the company ends in March 2021.

The company said the succession process will be concluded in 2020 to ensure a seamless handover.

Commenting on the results, Shuter said: “In 2019, the 25th anniversary of MTN Group, we delivered commercial momentum across our operations as well as great progress in our strategy and strong financial results, despite challenging trading conditions.

“We added 18 million customers to reach a total of 251 million and increased our data users by 17 million to 95 million and our fintech customers by 7 million to 35 million.

On the strategic front, we launched MoMo in South Africa and Afghanistan and received our super-agent licence in Nigeria, registering more than 100 000 agents by year-end. We also delivered R14 billion of asset realisations within the first 12 months of our programme and MTN Nigeria listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange.

“We recorded progress on various regulatory issues, including the AGF tax matter in Nigeria. Relationships with stakeholders across our markets improved, and we reported our highest employee sustainable engagement score yet.

“Following data price reductions in South Africa and Nigeria in 2019, we expect price elasticity to improve data revenue growth in 2020, supported by expanded 4G coverage in Nigeria and across the group. We will continue to scale up our fintech and digital services as well as grow our enterprise and wholesale businesses.”

Speaking further, Shuter said the results were supported by double-digit growth in service revenue by both MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana.

He said the performance of MTN South Africa was impacted by economic pressure, new data usage rules and changes in recognition criteria for roaming revenue from Cell C due to delayed payments under the networking roaming agreement.