Bharti Airtel (Airtel) has reported a consolidated a net profit of ₹854 crore for the third quarter ended December 31. The company had reported a net loss of ₹1,035 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Consolidated revenue was up 24.2 per cent, the highest ever at ₹26,518 crore during the October-December period as against ₹21,344 crore in the same period in 2019.

India revenue for the third quarter was at ₹19,007 crore, an increase of 25 per cent year-on-year (YoY). Mobile revenues grew by 32.4 per cent YoY on account of improved realisations as well as strong customer addition, the company said in a statement.

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Average revenue per user (ARPU) for the quarter came in at ₹166 as compared to ₹135 in the third quarter of 2019, an outcome of the company’s focus on acquiring quality customers as well as secular upgrading of customers to data, it said.

4G customer additions

“Despite the unprecedented volatility that we have confronted through the year, we delivered another strong performance this quarter. This consistency in performance was across every part of our portfolio, as reflected in market share growth across all our business segments,” Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, India and South Asia, said.

“The main highlight of the quarter was the 13 million 4G customers we added in our Wireless business. As a result, we grew our revenues by around 25 per cent over the same period last year and margins expanded,” he said.

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The company said it continues to garner a strong share of the 4G net ads in the market, adding that 4G data customers increased by around 34 per cent YoY to 165.6 million compared to the previous year.

Over the last four quarters, the company has added around 42 million 4G customers to its network. ARPU continues to be the best in industry — average data usage per data customer at 16.4 GBs/month, while voice usage was at 1,027 mins/customer/month.

Homes business segment witnessed a revenue growth of 2.3 per cent YoY with highest ever customer additions of around 2.15 lakh during the quarter to reach a total base of 2.79 million.

Airtel Business continues to accelerate its momentum with 9.2 per cent YoY growth, driven by demand for connectivity and solutions across global business and domestic businesses. The company said it continues to expand and grow adjacent verticals such as data centres, cloud, cyber security, customer relationship management platforms and video-conferencing, among others.

Digital TV witnessed a growth of 5.8 per cent YoY on an underlying basis, on the back of strong customer additions of 485K during the quarter.

During the quarter, the Group filed an application before the Supreme Court against ‘miscomputation’ of AGR dues by the Department of Telecommunications.

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