Telecel Profits Fell From US$55m To US$1m

Telecel has been in a never-ending downward spiral for a number of years now. Subscribers who would expect to get new services and products and innovation from their mobile network have instead gotten board room squabbles, poor network delivery and now it’s alleged shareholders are getting dwindling revenues and no profits.

An anonymous source with inside information regarding Telecel’s affairs contacted us exposing some of the rot that has allegedly set in at the company.

The source reveals that the company has failed to turn around a profit since the appointment of Angeline Vere as CEO back in 2015. The company is said to be worse off than it was with monthly revenues -which were as high as US$14 million/month – falling to US$3 million/month. The more startling figure was the EBIDTA (Earnings Before Interest, Depreciation, Tax and Amortisation) which the source claims to have plummeted from US$56 million to US$1 million.

Update: We contacted Telecel representative for clarity on the allegations a few hours ago but the telecoms company is yet to respond at the time of publishing Telecel’s CEO responded to the allegations made in this article. You can read her responses here.

The source also alleges that the CEO in question continues to breach protocol and one such example was a 20% salary increment in April of 2019 granted to employees without consultation or approval from the board. Telecel employees also went on to demand increments later in the year but the demands were rebuffed.

The biggest issues that the source cites are leadership failures which mostly relate to company financials citing the “failure to produce and submit a Budget update for 2019 as previously advised, recommended and requested by the board in December 2018″ along with “failure to produce audited financial statements for the last 5 years from 2013-2018“. The alleged reason for the delays is to do with the company’s going concern status but also as a direct result of management’s inability to prepare statutory financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards.

Telecel has been the “bad news” company for a while now and it doesn’t help the situation that these allegations are put before the company at a time when they continue to lag by almost 3 million subscribers to their nearest competitor, NetOne. This isn’t helped by the fact that Telecel has less than 60 000 users on its mobile money platform – Telecash.