Bharti Airtel Beats Estimates in Q2, Profit at Rs 1,383 Crore

NDTV Profit Desk

30 Oct 2014, 06:41 PM IST

Bharti Airtel Beats Estimates in Q2, Profit at Rs 1,383 Crore

Bharti Airtel Ltd, India's top telecommunications carrier, reported a more than doubling of quarterly profit, beating street estimates, on higher voice call prices and rapid growth in mobile data usage.

Consolidated net profit jumped to Rs 1,383 crore for the three months to September 30, New Delhi-based Bharti Airtel said on Thursday, beating Rs 1,286 crore analysts' estimate and underscoring a turnaround in the world's second-biggest wireless market by customers after a years-long price war hit carriers.

Leading Indian mobile phone operators have been able to increase voice call prices, their mainstay, in the recent quarters after a court order on a licensing scandal forced several smaller rivals out, bringing back pricing power to the incumbents.

Rapid growth in the usage of high-margin mobile data, fuelled by a surge in cheaper smartphones, has also helped carriers.

It was the fourth straight quarter of profit growth for Bharti Airtel, headed by billionaire Sunil Mittal and also nearly a third owned by Singapore Telecommunications, which reported its first profit growth in four years in the December quarter of 2013.

Bharti Airtel, which acquired money-losing African telecoms operations in 2010 in a $9 billion debt-funded deal, has yet to turn a profit there, weighing on its consolidated financials.

In the three months to September, which is Bharti Airtel's fiscal second quarter, total revenue rose about 7 per cent from a year earlier to Rs 22,845 crore. Mobile data revenue grew 74 per cent in India and 57 per cent in Africa from a year earlier, the company said.

Monthly average revenue per user (ARPU), a key metric for telecoms carriers, fell 2 per cent sequentially to Rs 198 for Bharti's Indian business and was 3 per cent down for the African operations.

Mobile voice realisation and minutes of usage per customer in India also fell from the previous quarter. The July-September period is seen as a seasonally weak quarter for the telecoms industry as frequent power cuts and network outages during monsoon rains hits traffic growth.

Shares in Bharti Airtel, which operates across 20 countries in Asia and Africa, closed 0.6 per cent higher ahead of the results announcement in a Mumbai market that gained almost 1 per cent. India accounts for more than two-thirds of Bharti Airtel's revenue.