Bharti Airtel Q2 net profit jumps 10% to Rs 1,523 crore

New Delhi: Country's top telecom operator Bharti Airtel Monday reported 10.1 percent jump in net profit to Rs 1,523 crore for the quarter ended September, bolstered by a sharp growth in mobile data usage.

It had reported net profit of Rs 1,383 crore on consolidated basis for the July-September quarter of the last financial year, Airtel said in a statement.

The total revenue rose 4.3 percent to Rs 23,836 crore during the second quarter of the current fiscal, compared with Rs 22,845 crore in the year-ago period.

With more people accessing high speed Internet on their smartphones, Airtel's mobile data revenue grew 49.8 percent to Rs 3,806 crore and data traffic jumped 76.3 percent. That is 16 percent of the total revenues as compared to 11.1 percent in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal.

The company witnessed, however, a sequential decline in voice minutes in the quarter under review, compared to the preceding quarter. Total minutes on network decreased to 336,002 million, as compared to 342,987 million in April-June period of the current fiscal, 2015-16.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) were Rs 8,265.3 crore during the quarter, an increase of 6.7 percent as compared to Rs 7,749.4 crore in the year-ago period.

"Airtel's revenue growth in India has accelerated to 13.3 percent in Q2 on an underlying basis, the highest in the last 12 quarters. With the commercial launch of 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," Bharti Airtel MD and CEO (India and South Asia) Gopal Vittal said.

Mobile data revenue contributed 21.5 percent of India revenues, up from 14.5 percent in the year-ago period. Data average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by Rs 42 to Rs 193 (year-on-year) in the reported quarter, led by 35.9 percent increase in data usage per customer.

Airtel, which has 340 million customers across 20 countries, said its churn rate in India has increased to 3.5 percent for the reported quarter as compared to 3.1 percent in the year-ago period, primarily on account of competitive pressures but remains the lowest in the industry.

Voice realisation per minute has dropped by 3.11 paise to 34.58 paise in second quarter, compared to 37.69 paise in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

Bharti Airtel stock gave up its initial gains and was trading 1.8 percent down at Rs 352.30, in line with overall sluggishness in the market. 

During the July-September quarter of 2015-16 fiscal, the

Airtel's mobile business in India incurred capital expenditure of Rs 3,101.5 crore, spent primarily on enhancing data capabilities.

The net debt of the company at the end of September stood at Rs 70,777 crore.

The company's Africa operations extended the net loss to USD 170 million during the quarter under review, as compared to a net loss of USD 124 million in the year-ago period.

Adjusted for the impact of divestment of its tower assets, Airtel's Africa revenues grew by 5.1 percent, the highest in the last 4 quarters, to USD 1,028 million as compared to USD 978 million in the corresponding quarter of last year.

"Strong demand is being witnessed both in voice and data with our consumption increasing by 19.5 percent and 104.5 percent respectively. In the first half of the year, we have divested tower assets of USD 1.7 billion," Airtel Africa MD and CEO Christian de Faria said.

As on September 30, the company had an aggregate customer base of 80.8 million in Africa as compared to 71.4 million in the corresponding quarter last year.

Customer churn for the quarter was at 5.8 percent as compared to 6.1 percent in the corresponding quarter last year.