• Delivered a net profit of ZMW 579 million in Q1 2026, more than Zambeef earned in six months with a 43.6% operating margin and a 90.3% dividend payout ratio
• The company grew revenue by 18.4% and customers by 9.9% while significantly reducing finance costs, largely due to the Kwacha’s appreciation and improved operational leverage
• The results highlight the value of a transparent, listed telecommunications company

Harare- Airtel Networks Zambia has reported revenue of ZMW 2,344 million, approximately USD 120.8 million at the confirmed closing rate of ZWM 19.4 per US dollar as at 31 March 2026, for the first quarter ended 31 March 2026.

This was an 18.4% increase from the prior year's ZMW 1,980 million, with operating profit reaching ZMW 1,021 million, approximately USD 52.6 million, against the prior year's ZMW 711 million, a 43.6% increase whose magnitude in percentage terms exceeds the revenue growth percentage by a factor of 2.4, and net profit after tax of ZMW 579 million, approximately USD 29.8 million, doubling from the prior period's ZMW 286 million.

The ratio of operating profit growing 2.4 times faster than revenue is the operating leverage signal that mature telecommunications networks produce when their fixed cost base, dominated by depreciation on network infrastructure, stays broadly stable while revenue grows through additional subscribers and increased data and mobile money consumption per existing subscriber.

The company does not need to build a new tower or lay additional fibre to generate ZMW 310 million more in operating profit year on year. It needs existing subscribers to use more data, transfer more money, and buy more airtime, activities whose marginal cost to the network operator is negligible compared to the incremental revenue they generate.

The customer base of 12.53 million, growing at 9.9% year on year, was the volume trajectory that sustained the revenue growth whose amplification through operating leverage produced the profit doubling. At 12.53 million subscribers and ZMW 2,344 million in quarterly revenue, the company generated approximately ZMW 186.9 per subscriber per quarter, roughly USD 9.6 per subscriber per quarter at the 31 March 2026 rate, a revenue intensity whose improvement across the network's maturing customer base is the commercial driver of the operating margin expansion.

The most significant single-line movement in the income statement was not the revenue growth or the operating profit expansion but the finance and exchange cost line, which moved from ZMW 678 million in Q1 2025, a figure that exceeded the operating profit of ZMW 711 million in that period, to ZMW 126 million in Q1 2026. In the prior year quarter, the company earned ZMW 711 million in operating profit and paid ZMW 678 million in finance and exchange costs, leaving ZMW 33 million before tax. In the current quarter, the same dynamics produced ZMW 1,021 million in operating profit against ZMW 126 million in finance costs, leaving ZMW 895 million before tax, a ZMW 862 million improvement in the pre-tax profit line from a ZMW 310 million improvement in operating profit and a ZMW 552 million improvement in finance costs simultaneously.

Meanwhile, the finance cost reduction was primarily driven by the Kwacha's appreciation against the US dollar during the period, since a company with USD-denominated liabilities sees those ZMW-equivalent charges fall when the domestic currency strengthens, and the exchange loss that a weaker Kwacha inflicted in prior periods reverses when the Kwacha recovers.

Profit before tax of ZMW 895 million after tax of ZMW 316 million produced the ZMW 579 million net profit, more than Zambeef generated across six months of selling beef, chicken, pork, milk, fish, and flour across 241 retail outlets, confirming that the combined effect of operating leverage and Kwacha currency relief is transformative at the net income level when both forces move in the same direction in the same quarter.

The board approved an interim dividend of ZMW 5.03 per share against earnings per share of ZMW 5.57, a payout ratio of 90.3% of quarterly earnings, and that figure was the most commercially explicit signal in the results package about what Airtel Networks Zambia's management believes about the business's cash generation capacity and its capital requirements because a company that returns 90% of a single quarter's earnings to shareholders is a company whose management has concluded that the business does not need that capital for network expansion, debt reduction, or working capital growth, that the network is sufficiently built, the debt is being managed, and the cash generation is reliable enough to distribute almost entirely rather than retain.

For investors seeking ZMW income, a quarterly dividend of ZMW 5.03 per share from a business generating ZMW 5.57 quarterly EPS implies an annualised dividend yield that, at similar quarterly rates, makes Airtel Zambia among the most generously distributing telecommunications companies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The 9.9% annual subscriber growth provides the revenue growth assurance that makes distributing 90% of current earnings commercially sustainable, since the growth in subscribers produces the revenue growth that sustains or grows the payout in future quarters without requiring retained earnings to fund network expansion whose cost has already been largely incurred.

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