Airtel Money made $830m in revenue in the 6 months to September, its first set of numbers since it started trading in London on 14 October. That's 25.1% growth in constant currency and 34% in dollars, with most of the gap down to a stronger Zambian kwacha.
Profit after tax rose 21.6% to $228m. Shareholders get an interim dividend of 6.4 US cents a share on 4 December, about 81% of attributable profit.
Volumes ran ahead of revenue
Customers pushed $128bn through the platform in the half, up 46.1% in dollars, and Q2 alone ran at an annualised $270bn. The customer base grew 18.7% to 56.7m. Merchants taking Airtel Money rose 85.5% to more than 587,000, and the agent network grew 26.3% to 2.4m.
Margins went the other way. Underlying EBITDA climbed to $398m, but the margin slipped to 48% from 50.8%. The company blames revised agreements with parent Airtel Africa, which phase out retention revenue by March 2027, plus a new levy in the DRC. CEO Ian Ferrao says he expects the margin to strengthen in the second half.
Loans and savings are growing fastest. Financial services revenue rose 44.8% in constant currency, yet it's still only 4.7% of the total. Payments and transfers grew 29.4%, wallet services 27.6%.
The listing itself priced the business at about £5.3bn ($7bn): existing shareholders sold 270m shares, 10% of the company, at £1.96 each.
Where Nigeria fits
East Africa carried the half with $615m of revenue, roughly 74% of the total (STATART calculation), from 44.1m customers. Francophone Africa grew 40.2% to $215m, led by the DRC.
This release puts no number on Nigeria. A year ago, Airtel Africa's own half year report showed Nigerian mobile money revenue of just $4m from 2.0m customers. Airtel also says about 75m of its telecom subscribers across its markets still don't use Airtel Money, so the room to grow sits inside its own customer base.
For Lagos fintech founders and POS operators, that's the useful read: Airtel's wallet works at scale in Nairobi and Kinshasa, and in Nigeria it's still a small business.
Airtel Money is a fast grower with a margin dip it calls temporary. Watch the H2 margin against Ferrao's promise, and whether the next set of numbers finally breaks out Nigeria.
Figures are as reported at the time of writing. STATART news is written by Frank Brother (Markets), Christina Amgbari (Insights) and Ebipadei Joseph (Lifestyle), and checked before publication.