After two loss-making years, MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest telecom operator, has returned to profitability and with it, dividend payments.

For 2025, the telecoms giant will pay a total of ₦419.91 billion ($304.72 million) to shareholders.

The company paid an interim dividend of ₦5 per share in October 2025, its first since August 2023, after restoring positive retained earnings and shareholders’ equity. It has now proposed a final dividend of ₦15 per share. That brings the total dividend for the year to ₦20 per share, according to its 2025 financial statements.

The payout follows a financial turnaround. Revenue rose by 54.93% in 2025, while profit after tax surged to ₦1.11 trillion ($805.50 million), reversing the loss recorded a year earlier. 

Here’s how the dividend payout breaks down, and who benefits the most.

The dividend structure

MTN’s interim dividend of ₦5 amounts to ₦104.98 billion ($76.18 million), and its proposed final dividend of ₦15 amounts to ₦314.93 billion ($228.54 million). 

When approved, the total dividend for 2025 would amount to ₦20, totalling ₦419.91 billion ($304.72 million).

MTN Nigeria has 203,749 shareholders, but one shareholder dominates. MTN Group, through MTN International (Mauritius) Limited, owns 73.39% of the company.

Out of 20.99 billion shares, the Group holds 15.41 billion shares, and at ₦20 per share, that translates to ₦308.19 billion ($226.05 million).

As of the end of the third quarter of 2025, MTN Group said it would receive a gross dividend of about 975 million rand ($59.19 million) from its Nigerian subsidiary. The rest is spread across a long tail of shareholders.

This distribution reflects the structure of listed companies: wide participation, but concentrated ownership. Some of these holdings also represent institutional pools such as pension funds.

The company also disclosed its directors’ shareholdings. Chief executive officer Karl Toriola holds 4.84 million shares, which translates to about ₦96.97 million ($70,369) in dividend income. MTN’s chief financial officer, Modupe Kadri’s 1.34 million shares will yield roughly ₦26.83 million ($19,469).

Former Nigerian Communications Commission executive vice chairman Ernest Ndukwe holds 161,375 shares and will receive ₦3.23 million ($2,344), while Omobola Johnson, a former communications minister, holds 225,000 shares worth ₦4.50 million ($3,266) in dividend payout for 2025.

MTN Nigeria remains one of the most capitalised companies on the Nigerian Exchange, with a market cap of more than ₦16.44 trillion ($11.93 billion). Its shares closed at ₦783 ($0.57) on March 2, 2026. 

In 2021, the company’s sell-down to local investors was oversubscribed, drawing more than 126,000 investors and reducing MTN Group’s stake from 78.8% to 75.6%.

In April 2025, MTN Group indicated that it would consider further reducing its stake once the Nigerian subsidiary restored positive equity and resumed dividend payments, part of its localisation commitments following its 2016 settlement over unregistered SIM cards.

However, during the company’s  Q3 2025 earnings call, group president and CEO Ralph Mupita suggested that changes to Nigeria’s capital gains tax regime have made a near-term stake reduction commercially unattractive. Plans to dilute ownership in favour of more local investors are effectively on pause.

MTN Nigeria’s return to dividend payments signals that its financial reset is largely complete.