(Business in Cameroon) - Telecommunications company MTN Cameroon closed 2014 with 9.7 million subscribers. This was revealed in the financial results published by its parent company based in South Africa. These figures clearly suggest that between September 2014 when the telecom company had 11.3 million subscribers and late December 2014, MTN Cameroon lost some 1.6 million customers.

The telecom company explains these results by an alignment of its calculated client base using new methodology adopted internally. It also prefers to see the positive side of the situation which can be summed up in two points. Firstly, the number of subscribers in December 31, 2014 is up by 1.5 million compared to December 2013 indicators. Secondly, with the number of customers it currently has, MTN remains the leader of the Cameroonian telecom sector with its 59.4% market share, ahead of its competitors – Orange Cameroon and Nexttel, the third telecom company which arrived in September 2014.

Beyond this mixed year-end result, the company’s sales grew by 19%, reaching 6.2 billion rand (299.9 billion FCFA) in December 2014, against 5.2 billion rand (250 billion FCFA) at the close of 2013. The operational result (gross profits, provisions and amortisation) improved only slightly by 0.2% for the same period, but displays a comfortable margin of 42.5% on overall revenue.