Bharti Airtel Q2 profit jumps 10% to Rs 1,523 cr

Country's top telecom operator Bharti Airtel today reported 10.1 per cent jump in net profit to Rs 1,523 crore for the quarter ended September, bolstered by a sharp growth in mobile data usage.
It had reported net profit of Rs 1,383 crore on consolidated basis for the July-September quarter of the last financial year, Airtel said in a statement.
The total revenue rose 4.3 per cent to Rs 23,836 crore during the second quarter of the current fiscal, compared with Rs 22,845 crore in the year-ago period.
With more people accessing high speed Internet on their smartphones, Airtel's mobile data revenue grew 49.8 per cent to Rs 3,806 crore and data traffic jumped 76.3 per cent. That is 16 per cent of the total revenues as compared to 11.1 per cent in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal.

The company witnessed, however, a sequential decline in voice minutes in the quarter under review, compared to the preceding quarter. Total minutes on network decreased to 336,002 million, as compared to 342,987 million in April-June period of the current fiscal, 2015-16.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) were Rs 8,265.3 crore during the quarter, an increase of 6.7 per cent as compared to Rs 7,749.4 crore in the year-ago period.

"Airtel's revenue growth in India has accelerated to 13.3 per cent in Q2 on an underlying basis, the highest in the last 12 quarters. With the commercial launch of 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," Bharti Airtel MD and CEO (India and South Asia) Gopal Vittal said.

Mobile data revenue contributed 21.5 per cent of India revenues, up from 14.5 per cent in the year-ago period. Data average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by Rs 42 to Rs 193 (year-on-year) in the reported quarter, led by 35.9 per cent increase in data usage per customer.
Airtel, which has 340 million customers across 20 countries, said its churn rate in India has increased to 3.5 per cent for the reported quarter as compared to 3.1 per cent in the year-ago period, primarily on account of competitive pressures but remains the lowest in the industry.
Voice realisation per minute has dropped by 3.11 paise to 34.58 paise in second quarter, compared to 37.69 paise in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

Bharti Airtel stock gave up its initial gains and was trading 1.8 per cent down at Rs 352.30, in line with overall sluggishness in the market.