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Bharti Airtel has reported a consolidated net profit of ₹830 crore for the third quarter ended December, a decline of three per cent year-on-year (YoY), as compared with ₹854 crore in the corresponding period previous year.
However, consolidated total revenue of the company grew by 13 per cent YoY at ₹29,867 crore for the quarter in review as against ₹26,518 crore in the October-December quarter 2020. The company said overall customer base stands at 485 million across 16 countries as of December 31 and total capex spend for the quarter of ₹6,101 crore.
The company said Airtel Business continues to accelerate its momentum, driven by rapidly increasing demand for data, connectivity related solutions and Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS). Nxtra by Airtel’s launched its third large data center in Chennai, It now operates the largest network of data centres in India with 11 hyperscale and 120 edge data centers, it said.
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Enterprise business
He said the company’s Enterprise, Homes and Africa business continue to deliver strongly, with steady increase in contribution to the overall mix of the portfolio.
“Our balance sheet is robust and we are now generating healthy free cash flows. This has enabled us to recently prepay some of our spectrum liabilities to the government thereby reducing the interest burden,” Vittal said.
On Google investment
On the recent announcement of Google’s investment into the company, he added that “Google’s recent investment is a strong validation of Airtel’s role in being a leading pioneer of India’s digital revolution. Our emerging digital services portfolio across Airtel IQ, AdTech, digital market place, Nxtra and digital banking positions us well to build an Airtel of the future.”
The company said it continues to garner strong share of the 4G customers in the market and 4G data customers increased by 18 per cent YoY to 195.5 million. The company has added 29.9 million 4G customers to its network over last year. ARPU continues to be the best in industry, average data usage per data customer at 18.3 Gbs/ month and voice usage per customer at 1,061 minutes/month, it said.
Airtel also rolled out additional 7,800 towers and around 31,000 mobile broadband base stations in the quarter. Several initiatives have also been undertaken to improve Network quality – leveraging digital tools/ probes to monitor and improve customer experience and scaling up Vo-Wi-Fi adoption to improve indoor experience. Airtel added that it now has over 37 million customers using Vo-Wi-Fi services.
Shares of Airtel closed at ₹708.85 apiece on the BSE on Tuesday, up 0.33 per cent from the previous close.
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