Bharti Airtel Q3 net profit slumps over 22% to Rs 1,117 crore

New Delhi: Country's largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel Thursday reported a 22.21 percent fall in its net profit at Rs 1,117 crore for the three months to December 2015, hit by higher infrastructure and finance costs.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 1,436 crore for the corresponding quarter last fiscal, Airtel said in a statement.

The company's total revenue, however, rose 3.7 percent 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 percent to Rs 4,135 crore for the quarter.

Its mobile data revenue for India registered a growth of 50.6 percent at Rs 3,184 crore, led by increase in the data customer base by 29.9 percent and traffic by 73.3 percent.

The data revenue's contribution is 23.1 percent to total mobile India revenues vis-a-vis 16.2 percent in the corresponding quarter last year.

Exceptional expenses during the quarter comprise, charge of Rs 1,152 million towards operating costs on network refarming 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.

"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 percent along with data ARPU reaching Rs 200," Bharti Airtel MD and CEO (India & South Asia) Gopal Vittal said.

He added the company's revenue grew by 11.6 percent 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 said.

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 percent.

Data average revenue per user (ARPU) in Africa in the quarter increased to USD 3.3 from USD 3.2 in the corresponding period last year and the data segment now contributes 14.3 percent to overall Africa revenue.

"Data consumption and revenues have grown by 111.6 percent and 40.8 percent 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.