Bharti Airtel on Monday reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,523 crore on sales of Rs 23,852 crore in the September quarter, beating estimates. “Mobile Data revenues contribute to 21.5% of Mobile India revenues vis-à-vis 14.5 per cnet in the corresponding quarter previous year”, it said.
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EBITDA for the quarter under review saw a 2.7 per cent drop to Rs 234.3 crore (Rs 2.34 billion), from Rs 240.8 crore (Rs 2.41 billion) in the trailing quarter. Capex stood at Rs 211.3 crore (Rs 2.11 billion) in the trailing quarter and at Rs 225.5 crore (Rs 2.22 billion) in the year-ago period. Net profit was down from Rs 1,554.3 crore in the previous, April-June quarter of the current fiscal.
The voice business remained weak during the quarter, even though the company added 4.5 million new subscribers.
Data ARPU of Airtel Africa increased to $3.4 from $3.1.
“Airtel’s revenue growth in India has accelerated to 13.3 % in Q2 on an underlying basis, the highest in the last 12 quarters”.
Average revenue per user in data increased Rs 42 to Rs 193 (year-on-year) in the reported quarter, led by a 35.9 per cent increase in data use per customer. The additional investment would be used for deployment of 3G and 4G sites across India, ET reports, citing Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia.
The company’s Africa operations revenue grew to Rs 6,895.6 crore from Rs 6,272.1 crore in the Jul-Sep quarter this year from the year-ago period. Total income of the company has increased by 4.33% at Rs 23851.90 crore for quarter under review as compared to Rs 22861.70 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2014. Strong demand is being witnessed both in voice and data with our consumption increasing by 19.5% and 104.5% respectively. “Consistent net additions have expanded our customer base to more than 80 million with growth of 13.3 per cent. In first half of the year, we have divested tower assets of $ 1.7 billion”, said Christian de Faria, MD and CEO, Africa, .
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Airtel, which has 340 million customers across 20 countries, said its churn rate in India has increased to 3.5 per cent for the reported quarter as compared to 3.1 per cent in the year-ago period, primarily on account of competitive pressures but remains the lowest in the industry.
