Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest telecom services provider, has reported a net profit of ₹1,523 crore for the second quarter of the current financial year, up 10.1 per cent against ₹1,383.2 crore in the same period last fiscal.

Consolidated revenues grew 4.3 per cent to ₹23,852 crore in the quarter ended September 30, from ₹22,861.7 crore during the same quarter a year ago.

“Airtel’s revenue growth in India has accelerated to 13.3 per cent in the second quarter on an underlying basis, the highest in the last 12 quarters. Our smaller businesses – home broadband, DTH and our business segment all continue to perform strongly. Mobile data revenue has grown by 60 per cent,” said Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and CEO, India and South Asia.

Mobile data revenue stood at ₹2,893 crore due to an increase in data customer base by about 27 per cent and traffic by 69.9 per cent.

Net debt for the company stood at ₹70,777 crore as of September 30. Revenues from Africa adjusted for the impact of divestment of tower assets grew by 5.1 per cent over the year. “With the commercial launch of high speed 4G services across 334 towns and roll-out of 3G services in our gap circles, we are now best positioned in the industry to leverage the fast growing data market,” Vittal said.

He said while investments into 4G services were made “a little ahead of the curve”, the company had leveraged its position well in a highly competitive market.

PTI reports: “Our willingness to spend an additional $200-400 million on capex during the course of this year. A large part of that capex would really be around expanding our footprint in 3G and 4G,” Vittal said during an investor call.

On a query if Airtel could increase tariffs, Vittal said the company would look at opportunities but it won’t be at the cost of losing competitiveness.

Bharti Airtel stock was traded lower by 1.91 per cent at ₹351.90 on the BSE on Monday.

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