Airtel stock gives up early gains; down 2% post Q2 results

Mumbai: Bharti Airtel stock gave up initial gains on profit-booking, falling 2 percent in a weak broader market Monday, even as the company reported 10.1 percent jump in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended September 30.

After opening the day with 1.74 percent gain at Rs 365, the stock erased the gains and ended at Rs 351.90, down 1.91 percent on BSE. During the day, it lost 3.19 percent to Rs 347.30.

On NSE, the stock of the country's top telecom operator went down by 1.92 percent to settle at Rs 352.20.

In terms of volume, 3.93 lakh shares of the company changed hands on BSE, and over 66 lakh shares were traded at NSE during the day.

"Bharti Airtel managed to beat market expectations by posting 10.1 percent rise in Q2 profits. The profits however fell from Rs 1,554 crore logged in the previous quarter. The stock corrected 3 percent intra-day on the news," said Hiren Dhakan, Associate Fund manager, Bonanza Portfolio Ltd.

Bharti Airtel today 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.

Net profit was down from Rs 1,554.3 crore in the previous (April-June) quarter of the current fiscal.

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.

In the broader market, the Sensex fell by 108.85 points to end at 27,361.96.