Telecom major Bharti Airtel Ltd has reported profit in the second quarter of current fiscal year on the back of stronger earnings from its mobile services in India and Africa. Bharti Airtel reported consolidated Q2 revenues of Rs 28,326 crore, a growth of 18.8 per cent YoY on a comparable basis and 13 per cent YoY on a reported basis largely on account of tariff hikes and increase in subscriber base.
The company on Tuesday, November 2 said that its net profit for the July-September quarter of FY22 stood at Rs 1,134 crore, compared with a net loss of Rs 763 crore in the same period of previous year. Profit from its mobile services in India more than doubled to Rs 1,612.50 crore from Rs 685 crore a year earlier, and profit from its mobile services in Africa increased 40 per cent to Rs 2,809 crore.
Consolidated mobile data traffic was at 10,943 petabytes (PBs) in the quarter with a healthy YoY growth of 47.8 per cent. India revenues for Q2 2022 also increased to Rs 19,890 crore, up by 18.3 per cent YoY on a comparable basis, and 10.4 per cent YoY on a reported basis.
Mobile revenues grew by 20.3 per cent YoY on comparable basis on account of increase in ARPU (average revenue per user) and strong 4G customer addition. ARPU for the quarter came in at Rs 153 as compared to Rs 143 in Q2 2021 on comparable basis, validating the strategy of focusing on quality customers.
The company continues to gain a strong share of the 4G customers in the market. 4G data customers increased by 26.1 per cent YoY to 192.5 million.
Over the last 4 quarters, the company has added 39.9 million 4G customers to its network. ARPU continues to be the best in the industry, average data usage per customer at 18.6 GBs/month and voice usage per customer at 1,053 mins/month.
“The balance sheet continues to be robust with healthy and improving cash flows. Our leverage ratio is under 3 and we remain committed to being financially prudent and yet growth focused. our performance for the recent Quarter has been strong because of the resilience and depth of our portfolio. In every one of our businesses we are at a lifetime high in terms of revenue market shares, the most critical barometer of our competitiveness,” said Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel.
With IANS inputs