Bharti Airtel net falls 22.2% dip in net profit
28 Jan 2016
Impacted by spectrum charges, Bharti Airtel has posted a 22.2 per cent dip in consolidated net profit at Rs1,117 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2015.
In comparison, India's top mobile operator by subscribers and revenue, had posted a net profit of Rs1,436 crore for the same quarter of the previous financial year.
The New Delhi-based telecom operator's total revenue rose 3.7 per cent to Rs24,066 crore, as against Rs23,217 crore recorded during the comparable year-ago quarter.
The revenue grew on an underlying basis, adjusted for India termination rates reduction and Africa tower asset divestment. Consolidated mobile data revenues crossed Rs4,000 crore and at Rs4,135 crore are up 44 per cent on a year-on-year basis, the company said in a statement.
''Our focus on acquiring quality customers has resulted in healthy net additions of 8.1 million in mobile. Our strong roll-out of 3G/4G sites has resulted in acceleration of data usage growth to 73.3 per cent along with data ARPU reaching Rs 200,'' said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia.
''Airtel's revenue grew by 11.6 per cent in Q3 on an underlying basis. Our smaller businesses continue to perform strongly and grew by 15.1 per cent on YoY basis in aggregate. We have launched 'Project Leap', a network transformation programme, to deliver a truly differentiated customer experience and reinforce our commitment to build a future ready network,'' he added.
India revenues for the quarter rose 11.6 per cent to Rs17,694 crore on a Y-o-Y basis, adjusted for the impact in reduction of termination rates, led by growth of 10.1 per cent in mobile, 19.1% in airtel business (B2B) and 19.1 per cent in Digital TV.
Mobile data revenues at Rs 3,184 crore registered a 50.6 per cent rise in India, led by increase in the data customer base by 29.9 per cent and traffic by 73.3 per cent. Data average revenue per user (ARPU) moved up by Rs 30 (YoY) to Rs 200 in the reporting quarter, led by 35.5 per cent increase in data usage per customer.
Mobile data revenues now contribute to 23.1 per cent of mobile India revenues vis-à-vis 16.2 per cent in the corresponding quarter last year.
