• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager
• Smartbuy

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

K.Venkatasubramanian

Mobile services continue to propel Bharti Airtel’s growth, but it is also being helped by robust improvement in its Enterprise Carrier division’s performance.

On a sequential basis, Bharti Airtel’s revenues increased by 8.5 per cent to Rs 8,483.3 crore, while net profit rose by 9.3 per cent to Rs 2,025 crore. In the June quarter, the company has managed to add nearly 7.4 million mobile subscribers. The Enterprise Carrier segment (about 18.5 per cent of revenues) has witnessed 24.9 per cent growth in revenues.

The average revenue per user (ARPU) has, reflecting a falling tariff regime, fallen by 2 per cent sequentially to Rs 350. Bharti’s Telemedia division’s (Broadband and landline) ARPU has remained stable over the quarter.

Bharti has improved market share amid heightened competition from Vodafone, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular. A strong pace of subscriber additions indicates that Airtel’s share in new subscribers has increased substantially to 28.7 per cent, from 24.8 per cent in the March quarter. This may have been driven by aggressive reduction in tariffs, through schemes such as Re 1 per minute call rates for all landline and mobile calls and continuing popularity of the lifetime recharge scheme.

The low tariff has predictably increased the minutes of usage, but at lower realisations of 65 paise per minute. With many new players lining up pan-India telecom forays, this trend may continue and Bharti may be looking at its scale benefits to sustain margins. Customer churn remains contained. High-margin non-voice revenues marginally increased their contribution to 9.7 per cent of revenues this quarter.

The Enterprise Carrier division has witnessed a strong June quarter, thanks to increase in usage of national (growth of 10 per cent) and international carriage (11 per cent) minutes sequentially.

This has lent support to operating margins from this segment. With increase in international calling card usage by Indians abroad, this may hold strong potential. The landline and broadband division has had flat ARPU at Rs 1,137.

The tenancy for its tower business continues to be 1.22 for Bharti, indicating challenges in attracting newer players to share tower infrastructure. But interestingly the sharing revenue per operator has gone up 6.3 per cent sequentially to Rs 31,893 per month per tower.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Performance | Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd | Microscope

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Strong show by enterprise carrier division

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line