Kolkata: Bharti Airtel swung to a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,134 crore in the September quarter from a year-earlier loss, helped by a one-time gain from spectrum rights transfer to Reliance Jio Infocomm, reduced finance costs and strong operating performance at the India mobile business.
Its fourth successive quarter in the black after six straight losses, the September quarter profit was about four times Rs 284 crore posted in the April-June period. Airtel made a loss of Rs 763.2 crore in the year-ago period.
Strong India mobile revenue growth was driven by tariff hikes in July in the base prepaid voice and postpaid corporate user segments, which propelled average revenue per user (ARPU) growth at India\u2019s second-largest telco, said analysts.
<\/div><\/div>The Sunil Mittal-led carrier said net income was boosted by \u201ca net gain of Rs 722.1 crore on account of transfer of spectrum right to another telecom operator during the September quarter\u201d.
After tax, \u201cthe overall net exceptional gain stood at Rs 540.4 crore,\u201d the company added in its earnings statement Tuesday. Bharti Airtel concluded a spectrum trading deal to sell 800 MHz airwaves to Jio in three circles in August.
Airtel\u2019s ARPU, a key performance metric for telcos, grew to Rs 153 from Rs 146 in the June quarter. Brokerage UBS said the ARPU growth was \u201caided by the plan tweaks and improved customer mix,\u201d and described the quarterly performance as \u201chealthy\u201d.
Consolidated revenue, in turn, grew 13% from the year earlier and 5.5% sequentially to Rs 28,326 crore.
\u201cWe sustained operational excellence with a healthy 5.5% sequential growth in consolidated revenues and expansion of Ebitda margin to 49.5%,\u201d Gopal Vittal, managing director of Bharti Airtel, India, South Asia, said in a statement Tuesday.
He said Airtel\u2019s strategy of focusing on quality customers had been \u201cvalidated by strong price flow and ARPU increase that we have seen in our wireless business\u201d. He added that the company \u201ccontinued to maintain a high degree of financial flexibility, which is why it has \u201cachieved nil bank debt\u201d for its India businesses.
<\/div><\/div>In the just-ended quarter, Airtel added 2.24 million users on a net basis to end with 323.47 million subscribers. Monthly churn, though, rose to 3% from the preceding quarter as a result of the 61% price hike in the base prepaid voice users segment in late July.
Quarterly net 4G user additions rose by over 8.12 million in the September quarter from the modest 5.13 million additions in the April-June period. This was reflected in a 0.7 % growth in data usage per customer to 19.06 GB from the preceding quarter, indicating that people continued to use the telco\u2019s mobile broadband network while working from home. Voice usage per user rose nearly 1% to 1,053 minutes.
\u201cBharti\u2019s 2Q cellular revenue growth was better than Jio\u2019s as it was up 6.2% vs Jio\u2019s 4.1% qoq,\u201d BofA Securities said in a note, adding that Bharti\u2019s \u201cnet adds too were stronger\u201d at 2.2 million vs Jio, which lost over 11 million customers in fiscal second quarter.