Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest telco, has reported 11.6% jump in its Indian revenue at Rs 17,694 crore in the third quarter 2016 on an underlying basis, adjusted for the impact in reduction of termination rates, and driven by growth of 10.1% in mobile, 19.1% in airtel business (B2B) and 19.1% in Digital TV on an yearly basis. The company’s net profit however dropped to Rs1,117 crore from Rs1,436 crore a year ago.
“Airtel’s revenue grew by 11.6% in Q3 on an underlying basis. Our smaller businesses continue to perform strongly and grew by 15.1% on Y-o-Y basis in aggregate. We have launched “Project Leap”, a network transformation programme, to deliver a truly differentiated customer experience and reinforce our commitment to build a future ready network,” Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said in a statement.
Mobile data revenues at Rs 3,184 crore registered a growth of 50.6% year-on-year in India, led by increase in the data customer base by 29.9% and traffic by 73.3%.
Vittal added that the company’s 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% along with data ARPU reaching Rs 200,” he added.
The company’s data ARPU has moved up by Rs 30 on year-on-year to Rs 200 in the third quarter, led by 35.5% increase in data usage per customer. Mobile data revenues now contribute to 23.1% of Mobile India revenues vis-à-vis 16.2% in the corresponding quarter last year, the company said.
The company’s consolidated revenues reached at Rs 24,066 crore, up 5.9% year-on-year on an underlying basis, adjusted for India termination rates reduction and Africa tower asset divestment. Consolidated mobile data revenues crossed Rs 4,000 crore and at Rs 4,135 crore are up 44.0% year-on-year. The company’s overall customer base crosses 350 million and stands at 350.9 million across 20 countries, up 12.1% year-on year.
