Airtel Uganda turned 13.3% revenue growth into a 41.1% profit jump in FY2025 as near-flat operating costs and a permanent shift toward data consumption drove EBITDA margins to 54.9%, the highest since the company's November 2023 listing, with management declaring dividends equivalent to 99.8% of full-year earnings.
- •Profit after tax rose to Ushs 446.9 Bn from Ushs 316.7 Bn, while revenue climbed to Ushs 2,249.7 Bn. Data revenue crossed Ushs 1.1 trillion for the first time, overtaking voice to contribute 49.3% of service revenues, up from 45.5% a year earlier.
- •Voice revenue grew 4.4%, constrained by the September 2024 regulatory cut to local interconnect rates from Ushs 45 to Ushs 26.
- •Bharti Airtel Uganda Holdings B.V., which holds 89.1%, faces a November 2026 deadline to sell 3.64 billion additional shares to meet Uganda's 20% local ownership requirement.
FY2025 reversed that trajectory with total operating costs excluding depreciation rose just 2.0% against 13.3% revenue growth, a gap the company attributed to its "war on waste" cost programme. EBITDA surged 24.5% to Ushs 1,235.4 Bn, and profit after tax has grown at an 11.1% CAGR since FY2022, with free cash flow compounding faster at 18.5%.
"EBITDA, short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, measures a company’s operating performance by excluding financing costs, taxes, and certain non-cash expenses."
The customer base expanded 13.9% to 19.2 million, with data customers growing 19.6% to 8.7 million. Data traffic surged 46.0%, usage per customer rose 14.8% to 6.26 GB, and smartphone penetration reached 43.5%. The company launched VoLTE, reaching 1.7 million users by year-end, introduced an AI-powered anti-spam service (a first in Africa), and grew monthly active users on the My Airtel App from 0.4 million to 1.5 million.
In enterprise, Airtel launched Network as a Service in partnership with Cisco and is providing end-to-end ICT solutions for the Hoima City Stadium construction.
The margin story is the sharpest lens on Airtel Uganda's post-listing evolution with EBITDA margins compressing from 55.5% in FY2022 to 50.0% in FY2024 as access charges nearly tripled (Ushs 42.1 Bn to Ushs 104.8 Bn) and network costs outpaced revenue.
The results drew muted market reaction with the telco's shares trading around Ushs 80 on the Uganda Securities Exchange, 20% below the Ushs 100 IPO price, with average daily volumes under Ushs 1 million and zero analyst coverage.
The November 2023 IPO was undersubscribed at 54.45%, raising Ushs 211.4 Bn as the National Social Security Fund took 97% of allocated shares. MTN Uganda's recent secondary offer, oversubscribed at more than 3 billion applications for 1.57 billion shares, provides a contrasting template.
The broader challenge is converting coverage into usage. The GSMA estimates 96% of Uganda's population has 4G coverage, but 75% within reach have never gone online, with entry-level smartphones costing 39% of monthly GDP per capita.
