International telecoms and media company, Millicom said it is making substantial progress towards achieving its strategic goals following a record 2.6 million 4G sign-ups and 24% mobile data revenue growth over the last year.  

Publishing its annual report for 2016 the company, which operates primarily in Africa and Latin America, announced total revenues of $6.25 billion (€5.84 million). 

Chief executive, Mauricio Ramos, said he was pleased with the rate of expansion.

“In 2016 we made substantial progress towards our strategic goal of a two-fold reconfiguration of our business, rapidly growing our mobile data and cable revenue in Latin America, and pushing ahead with major initiatives to enhance our operational efficiency.

“Looking ahead to 2017, we aim to accelerate further the implementation of our strategy in Latin America, targeting to roll out state-of-the-art fibre to more than 1 million additional homes in the year, and to add more than 3 million new 4G mobile data customers.”

Last year, Millicom’s fibre network expanded by a record 777,000 homes, taking their reach to more than eight million homes, exceeding targets by 100,000. 

In Latin America, mobile data revenue growth was driven by the increasee in the number of smartphone data users. 4G has now been launched in all of Millicom’s Latin American markets, where their related customer base grew four-fold over the year to more than 3.4 million.

One brake on revenue growth came from the changing habits of users, who no longer use voice and SMS services, as had been anticipated. Consquently, service revenue in the region was down 0.2%.

The African market exceeded expectations for 2016, with service revenue growth of 10.5%. 

Millicom is selling their Senegal division to Wari Group for $129 million (€120 million), subject to regulatory approval, and will also dispose of their 22% stake in Helios Towers Africa.

According to the report, Millicom now feels in a position to make further progress configuring their cost base for 2017, and expect organic growth this year to be in the low-single-digit range, but ahead of that seen for 2016.

At the annual general meeting on 4 May 2017 the board will propose payment of an unchanged ordinary dividend of $2.64 per share, said the report.