Bharti Airtel’s doing very well, despite its African debacle!

After registering rise in data usage, Bharti Airtel recorded a 10.1% surge in profit during the second quarter of FY2015-16, but its Africa arm still registered losses.

The New Delhi-headquartered telecom company has also experienced competitive pressure on its voice business as well as it recorded a slump in interconnect and roaming charges.

Bharti Airtel’s profit surged to Rs1,523 crore as compared to Rs 1,383 crore, the amount it registered last year. But it must be noted that as compared to first quarter’s profit which was Rs 1,554 crore, the profit dropped in the quarter under review.

As per the earlier estimates, the telco expected its net profit to stand around Rs1,200 crore in the second quarter.
Notably, Revenue rose 4.3 per cent on year to Rs23,836 crore, as the telco ended the quarter with 340 million customers across India, South Asia and Africa.

Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said, "Airtel's revenue growth in India has accelerated to 13.3% in Q2 on an underlying basis, the highest in the last 12 quarters. Our smaller businesses – home broadband, DTH and our business segment all continue to perform strongly. Mobile data revenues has grown by 60%.”

Talking about the recent 4G launch, Vital also added, "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."

In a one year’s time, Africa net loss widened to $170 million from $124 million. However, its total net interest costs increased to Rs 1,053 crore from Rs 687 crore in 2014.

According to Bharti Airtel, owing to conflicting currency movements forex as well as derivative losses stood at Rs 809 crore, which was much higher than Rs 219 crore during the same quarter last fiscal.
(Image: The Economic Times)