Telecom major Bharti Airtel reported a net loss of Rs 763 crore in the July-September quarter, down from a loss of Rs 23,405 crore it reported in the same quarter a year ago. Its revenues grew 22% to Rs 25,785 crore.
Airtel’s average revenue per user (ARPU) increased to Rs 162 as compared to Rs 128 in the second quarter of the last financial year. This is also an increase from the previous quarter’s ARPU of Rs 157.
The total customer base stands at around 440 million across 16 countries, Airtel said.
It also said that its 4G data customers increased by 48.1% to 152.7 million compared to the previous year with the average data usage per subscriber at 16.0 GBs/month, while voice usage was at 1,005 mins/sub/month.
The company said that its Digital TV witnessed a growth of 1.9% growth, on the back of strong customer additions of 549,000 during the quarter. “We continued to expand our channel portfolio and are also working with educational institutions to broadcast classes to students to ensure education is not disrupted,” the company said in a statement.
Airtel has been expanding its digital services over the past few quarters, and claims to now have 160 million digitally engaged users. On its online music streaming platform, Wynk, Airtel says it has 59.3 million monthly active users as of the second quarter, with an addition of ~9 million during the quarter.
Its digital app Airtel Thanks has 81.6 million MAUs in Q2, with an addition of ~8 million and Airtel Xstream is at 33.7 Mn MAUs, addition of 8 million users during the quarter.
Homes business segment witnessed a revenue growth of 7.3% year-on-year, having added over 129,000 customers during the quarter to reach to a total base of 2.58 million.
“Despite being a seasonally weak quarter, we delivered a strong performance with revenue growing at ~22% YoY. In the mobile segment, we added over ~14 Mn 4G customers and grew revenues by ~26%... Our data consumption grew by 58% YoY which reflects strong engagement of customers on our network... Other lines of business also continued with steady growth momentum, with Airtel business growing 7.5% YoY. We stay committed to improving the profitability of the business. Our continued focus on ARPU improvement and cost optimization led to EBITDA margin expansion by over ~ 158 bps in the quarter sequentially,” Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said in a statement.