MTN Nigeria just reported its profit for the first quarter of 2026. The giant telecommunication company posted a pre-tax profit of ₦546.4 billion, which is a 170% year-on-year increase, on revenue of ₦1.49 trillion, recording its highest quarterly haul in years.
After-tax profit appears to be ₦355.5 billion, while earnings per share jumped 166% to ₦16.95. The report didn’t waste time to reflect on the stock market. The stock jumped over 6% in a day to ₦870, pushing MTN Nigeria to the top spot as the most valuable company on the Nigerian Exchange. This doesn’t look like recovery anymore. It looks like momentum.
Under the hood, the growth is coming from everywhere that matters. Data revenue rose 56%, helped by more smartphone users and heavier Internet consumption; Nigerians are now averaging over 14GB per month. Voice is still growing, but fintech is where things get interesting. Revenue there jumped nearly 78%, and if you strip out XtraTime MTN’s suspended airtime lending product —core fintech revenue surged over 190%. There’s also a quieter but important shift: foreign exchange, which used to drag earnings down, flipped into a ₦33 billion gain this quarter. At the same time, MTN is cutting debt, paying down over ₦150 billion.
To understand how big this turnaround is, let’s rewind to about two years ago, MTN Nigeria was deep in the red, hit by massive forex losses and rising costs it couldn’t pass on to customers. Tariffs hadn’t been adjusted in a decade. By 2024, the company reported a ₦399 billion loss. Then came the reset: the naira stabilised, and regulators approved a long-awaited tariff hike in early 2025. By the end of that year, MTN was back in profit, and Q1 2026 reports proves that wasn’t a one-off bounce but a structural shift.
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Getting here wasn’t automatic. MTN spent heavily to upgrade its network once tariffs were adjusted, ramping up capital expenditure to handle rising data demand and improve service quality. That investment is now paying off in higher usage and stronger revenue. But it hasn’t been painless for customers. Many Nigerians have complained about rising data costs, with some cutting back on apps and usage just to cope. Those record profits are tied to a user base of nearly 90 million people, most of whom don’t have many alternatives.
Moving forward, the stakes are getting even bigger. The results land alongside a major fintech restructuring that will shift control of MTN’s mobile money business to its parent company, a move aimed at unlocking more capital for growth. With earnings already this strong, expectations for higher dividends are building fast. But there are still risks: energy costs remain volatile, and the continuation of MTN XtraTime, currently tied up in a legal dispute, could further shape fintech growth. For now, though, MTN Nigeria has done something rare: it’s out of financial crisis and now on acceleration.
