MTN Group is a South Africa-based multinational mobile telecom company. It currently has about 234 million subscribers in 20 countries, mainly in Africa and the Middle East. The majority (about 156 million) of its subscribers are from Nigeria, Iran, South Africa, and Ghana.

MTN Group has gone through a lot over the last two years. MTNOY’s share price has fallen about 63% since October 2014. The company was also fined $5.2 billion by the Nigerian government for being slow to disconnect customers thought to be members of Boko Haram. That fine has since been reduced to $1.7 billion to be paid over three years and only from cash held and earned in Nigeria. In order to pay the fine, MTN has sold most of its tower network in Nigeria. A Nigerian senator has also accused MTN of repatriating $14 billion out of the country over more than a decade. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any proof of this, and MTN claims to have all the proper documentation for that period.

MTN has also suffered due to the fact that many of the countries in which it operates are going through hard times. A lot of those countries are also pretty heavily commodities-based economies like Nigeria. It is also operating in four countries that are currently war zones: Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.

Despite all of these worries, MTN still seems to be a huge long-term opportunity, in my eyes. It has lots of exposure and subscribers in countries that are expected to grow a lot over the next 10 to 20 years, due to great demographics and many other factors, like low debt-to-GDP. For example, Iran, where MTN has almost 48 million subscribers. It also has $1.1 billion in Iran, most of which should be repatriated back within the next three to six months.

MTN is still the biggest player in mobile telecom in Africa and is well-positioned to establish itself in new African frontier markets like Ethiopia (which has over 93 million people) over the next three or four years. Most of its competition would come from much smaller local companies, because of how hard it is for a large new company to start from scratch in Africa. MTN has a really strong brand in Africa, where it has been awarded Africa’s most valuable brand in 2014 and 2015.

In the short run, I am not sure where the price of MTNOY is headed. Is it going to bottom out at $5, $6, or $7? Has it already bottomed out? I don’t know, but what I do know is that MTN has a lot of potential for long-term growth, and looks undervalued in that regard. It is one of the best ways to get exposure to Africa’s long-term future growth, with the added bonus of its business in Iran as well.