The country’s largest telecom player, Bharti Airtel, has reported a 76 per cent fall in consolidated net profit at ₹343 crore for the second quarter. It had posted ₹1,461 crore in the year-ago period.

Consolidated revenue also declined by around 12 per cent to ₹21,777 crore (₹24,652 crore).

Revenues from India stood at ₹16,728 crore, a fall of 13 per cent year-on-year (YoY), led by a mobile drop of 17 per cent YoY, the company said.

It said mobile market continues to experience value erosion and financial stress led by “competitive pressures”.

However, mobile data traffic grew four-fold in the quarter to 784 billion MBs, against (178 billion MBs) in the year-ago quarter. Mobile broadband customers rose 34 per cent to 55.2 million (41.3 million), Airtel said.

“The financial stress in the industry continues due to double-digit revenue decline and will be further accentuated by the reduction in interconnection charge (IUC) rates in the next quarter. This will eventually force operator consolidation and exits as we have witnessed in the recent past,” said Gopal Vittal, Bharti Airtel’s Managing Director and CEO, India and South Asia.

The company’s consolidated debt has risen to ₹91,480 crore from ₹87,840 crore in the previous quarter. Investments were stepped up in the quarter to improve both data coverage and capacity, Airtel said.

Net debt excluding the deferred payment liabilities to the Department of Telecom and finance lease obligations rose ₹2,554 crore sequentially in the quarter. Lower EBITDA, along with rising spectrum costs and continued investments in India have resulted in deterioration of return on capital employed to 5 per cent from 7 per cent in the corresponding quarter last year, Airtel added.

Shares of the company closed at ₹497.65 on the BSE, up 0.98 per cent from Monday’s close.

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