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Aided by a sizeable deferred tax gain, telecom major Bharti Airtel on Thursday reported a consolidated net profit of ₹249.2 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2018.
The country’s second largest telecom network had recorded a consolidated net profit of ₹586 crore in the September quarter (July-September 2017) last fiscal. For the quarter under review, Bharti Airtel has recorded a deferred tax gain of ₹2,633 crore.
Total revenue for the quarter under review stood at ₹20,422.5 crore, up from ₹20,080 crore in the June quarter and ₹19,634.3 crore from the same period last fiscal.
The latest total revenue print was, however, lower than the total revenue of ₹21,777 crore recorded in the same September quarter last fiscal (July-September 2017).
For the half year ended September 30, Bharti Airtel’s net profit came at ₹728.8 crore, much lower than net profit of ₹1,203.8 crore.
The company reported a 2 per cent dip in India mobile service customer base during the quarter ending September 2018.
According to a statement to the exchanges, customers of Bharti Airtel’s India mobile services stood at 329,678 thousand. This stood at 336,274 thousand in the quarter ending June 30, 2018.
Mobile services revenue
A company statement said, “Revenue from mobile services decreased by 16.3 per cent to ₹10,252.1 crore as compared to ₹12,245 crore in the corresponding quarter last year due to continued Average revenue per user (ARPU) contraction.
Overall ARPU for the quarter was ₹101 as compared to ₹142 in the corresponding quarter last year. The quarter has witnessed a reduction in rate of ARPU decline, owing to the high value customer retention initiatives implemented.”
However, traffic from India’s mobile services rose 1.6 per cent to 693,061 million minutes by September 2018 end over the same period.
Data usage, capacity
A company statement said, “Mobile Data usage per customer witnessed an increase of 125.6 per cent to 9,221 MBs during the quarter as compared to 4,087 MBs in the corresponding quarter last year and has increased by 17.2 per cent compared to previous quarter.”
“Building data capacities and investing ahead of the data demand curve remains a key priority area. The capital expenditure for the quarter was ₹7,684.5 crore as compared to ₹7,483.8 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. The consolidated operating free cash burn during the quarter was at ₹1,341.2 crore as compared to a positive cash flow of ₹519.9 crore in the corresponding quarter last year,” the statement said.
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