Hit by higher infrastructure and finance costs, India's largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Thursday posted its net profit down by 22.21 per cent at Rs 1,117 crore for the three months ended December 31, 2015, while the telecom giant had posted its net profit of Rs 1,436 crore for the corresponding quarter last fiscal.
Though the net debt of the company rose to some extent at the end of December as compared to September-end, the Africa revenue adjusted for the impact of divestment of tower assets which grew by 3.1 per cent. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 1,436 crore for the corresponding quarter last fiscal, according to the company statement.
The company's total revenue, however, rose 3.7 per cent to Rs 24,066 crore for the stated period as compared with Rs 23,217 crore in the year-ago quarter. Airtel's consolidated mobile data revenue grew 44 per cent to Rs 4,135 crore for the quarter. Its mobile data revenue for India registered a growth of 50.6 per cent at Rs 3,184 crore, led by increase in the data customer base by 29.9 per cent and traffic by 73.3 per cent.
However, Bharti Airtel MD and CEO (India & South Asia) Gopal Vittal said, “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.”
“The company's revenue grew by 11.6 per cent in the third quarter on an underlying basis and its smaller businesses continue to perform strongly. We have launched 'Project leap' to deliver a truly differentiated customer experience and reinforce our commitment to build a future ready network,” Vittal added.
The net debt of the company rose to Rs 78,816 crore at the end of December as compared to Rs 70,777 crore as on September-end. In constant currency terms, the Africa revenue, adjusted for the impact of divestment of tower assets, grew by 3.1 per cent. Data average revenue per user (ARPU) in Africa in the quarter increased to $3.3 from $3.2 in the corresponding period last year and the data segment now contributes 14.3 per cent to overall Africa revenue. “Data consumption and revenues have grown by 111.6 per cent and 40.8 per cent respectively Y-o-Y. Operational efficiencies have resultant in improvement in EBITDA margin for a second consecutive quarter,” Bharti Airtel MD and CEO (Africa) Christian de Faria said.
But the company said that the data revenue's contribution was 23.1 per cent to total mobile India revenues vis-a-vis 16.2 per cent in the corresponding quarter last year. “Exceptional expenses during the quarter comprise, charge of Rs 1,152 million towards operating costs on network reframing and upgradation programme, Rs 2,313 million towards restructuring activities in a few countries and net tax of Rs 428 million and impact on minority interest of Rs 182 million on the above,” it said.
Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel and Malaysia-based Axiata Group will be merging their operations in Bangladesh to form the second largest operator in that country. Axiata Group Berhad and Airtel on Thursday signed a definitive agreement to merge their respective telecom subsidiaries - Robi Axiata ltd and Airtel Bangladesh ltd - in Bangladesh, Airtel said in a statement.
According to industry sources, the enterprise valuation of the merged entity is estimated to be around $2 billion. Upon completion of the merger, Axiata will hold 68.3 per cent controlling stake and Bharti Airtel 25 per cent, while the remaining 6.7 per cent will be held by the existing shareholder NTT Docomo of Japan.