Reuters- "The valuation any normal conservative investor will place on the profit stream will come with a big discount," Sedgwick told Reuters.

Founded with the help of South African government, MTN is seen as one of South Africa's biggest corporate successes of the post-apartheid era but in recent years it has been regarded as a stock with limited growth outlook.

That is partly a result of investor unease over the company's operations in its biggest market, Nigeria, where it is under intense regulatory scrutiny after agreeing to pay a reduced $1 billion fine for failing to cut off unregistered SIM cards from its network.

MTN is also the subject of a parliamentary investigation in Nigeria on whether it unlawfully repatriated almost $14bn between 2006 and 2016, which the company has denied.

Its subscriber numbers in Nigeria have fallen by nearly 4 percent to about 59 million while sales are down 5 percent.

Shares in MTN have dropped more than 20 percent over the past year, underperforming its closest rival Vodacom, which inched up 0.38 percent.

($1 = 13.9374 rand)

(Additional reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; editing by Giles Elgood and Angus MacSwan)