Expertise in New Markets.
Experts are usually wrong about the size of a market. At a conference in Oxford last year, I heard a speaker responsible for the launch of GSM in West Africa admit this, and that all their internal modelling predicted the total mobile market in Nigeria to be no more than 20m. Today, we stand at 140m. Not a single soul predicted that. When MTN announced they had paid ~$285m for a mobile license in Nigeria, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange met the news with a drop in the share price. Today, MTN Nigeria represents at least 40% of MTN’s market value. The 60.7% ebitda profits which gush from this market destroy other markets listed below combined. In 2013, that was ~$2.7b in profits.
Yet when they announced the license, the market reduced their share price. But that’s telecoms. And that was 2001, 14 years ago.
We belong to something new.
I see the dawn of a new beginning
This time, this time we can’t go home
I hear the streets of tomorrow calling
I go, I go ...