Bharti Airtel Q2 profit falls by 2 per cent

NEW DELHI: Telecom operator Bharti Airtel has registered a sequential decline of about 2% in its second quarter net profit to Rs 1,523.3 crore over the first quarter of the same fiscal.

It had recorded about 40 per cent rise in its net profit at Rs 1,554.3 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, FY16.

"The company's consolidated revenues for Q2‟16 at Rs 23,836 crore grew by 6.6% (4.3 per cent reported Y-o-Y) on an underlying basis, adjusted for India termination rates reduction and Africa tower assets divestment over the corresponding quarter last year," the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

The consolidated mobile data revenues stood at Rs 3,806 crore, up by 49.8 percent Y-o-Y.

"Adjusted for the impact in reduction of termination rates, India revenues growth accelerated to 13.3% Y-o-Y (10.3 per cent reported Y-o-Y). On an underlying basis, Mobile revenues grew by 12.3 per cent airtel business‟ (B2B) by 19.0 per cent and Digital TV by 22.6 per cent Y-o-Y. Mobile Data revenue at Rs 2,893 crore registered a growth of 60.3 per cent Y-o-Y in India, led by increase in the Data customer base by 27.2 per cent and traffic by 69.9 per cent,” the company said in statement.

“Data ARPU has moved up by Rs 42 (Y-o-Y) to Rs 193 in Q2‟16, led by 35.9 per cent increase in data usage per customer. Mobile Data revenues contribute to 21.5% of Mobile India revenues vis-à-vis 14.5 per cnet in the corresponding quarter last year,” it said.

In constant currency terms, Africa revenues adjusted for the impact of divestment of tower assets grew by 5.1 per cent Y-o-Y (4.0 per cnet reported Y-o-Y). Data revenues stood at $ 138 mn and grew by 40.6 per cent Y-o-Y.

"With the commercial launch of high speed 4G services across 334 towns and roll-out of 3G services in our gap circles, we are now best positioned in the industry to leverage the fast growing data market. On the regulatory front, we welcome the guidelines issued by DOT on spectrum sharing and trading,” said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said:

“Strong demand is being witnessed both in voice and data with our consumption increasing by 19.5 per cent and 104.5 per cent 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,.