Bharti Airtel, a leading integrated telecommunications company, announced a steady growth in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended September 2015. During the quarter, the profit of the company rose 10.09% to Rs 15,227.00 million from Rs 13,832.00 million in the same quarter last year.
Analysts, on average, expected Bharti Airtel to report a profit of Rs 11.74 billion.
Revenues for the quarter rose marginally 4.33% to Rs 238,519.00 million, compared with Rs 228,617 million for the prior year period.
Operating margin for the quarter stood at 34.59 percent as compared to 33.70 percent for the previous year period. Operating Income for the quarter was Rs 82,502.00 million, compared with Rs 77053 million in the previous year period.
Earnings per share for the quarter stood at Rs 4.00, registering 33.33% growth over previous year period.
Consolidated EBITDA at Rs 82.65 billion grew by 6.7% Y-o-Y with EBITDA margin expanding by 0.8% to 34.7%, driven by India's margin expansion by 1.6% Y-o-Y.
Bharti Airtel's overall customer base stands at 340.0 million across 20 countries, up 11.9% Y-o-Y.
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%. 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. On the regulatory front, we welcome the guidelines issued by DOT on spectrum sharing and trading''.
Christian de Faria, MD and CEO, Africa, said, ''Airtel Africa performance has improved, with underlying revenue growth of 5.1% in Q2, the highest in the last 4 quarters. Data revenue has grown by 40.6%. Strong demand is being witnessed both in voice and data with our consumption increasing by 19.5% and 104.5% respectively. Consistent net additions have expanded our customer base to more than 80 million with growth of 13.3%. In first half of the year, we have divested tower assets of USD 1.7 billion''.
| Quarterly Results - Consolidated (Rs in mn) |
| As at | Sep - 15 | Sep - 14 | %Change |
| Revenues | 238,519.00 | 228,617.00 | 4.33 |
| Net Profit | 15,227.00 | 13,832.00 | 10.09 |
| Diluted EPS | 4.00 | 3.00 | 33.33 |
Shares of the company gained Rs 6.25, or 1.74%, to trade at Rs 365.00. The total volume of shares traded was 0 at the BSE (9.08 a.m., Monday).
