Bharti Airtel on Friday reported 2.3 per cent increase in its net profit at Rs.2,210 crore in the third quarter of the current fiscal ending December 31, 2009, while revenues rose by over one per cent to Rs.9,772 crore. Bharti had 12.5 crore customers as on December 31, 2009, across India and Sri Lanka, a 42 per cent increase in the total customer base over the corresponding period last year.
Bharti Airtel Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Mittal said: “Bharti Airtel continues to ensure a robust market share despite the hyper competition and maintains its drive for internal efficiencies by leveraging its economies of scale. In addition, we have enlarged our contiguous footprint in South Asia by entering the Bangladesh market through a controlling interest in Warid Telecom.”
According to Bharti Airtel Group CEO Manoj Kohli: “In a hyper competitive situation we are witnessing now in the mobile industry, we have retained our revenue market share at 32 per cent and have a strong earnings before interest and depreciation margin at 40 per cent, which shows our strong performance. The trend of adding over 1.5 crore subscriber a month is not adding more revenue to the industry as the revenue earnings customers are less.”
Mr. Kohli also said Airtel was expecting more competition from the new players, who are likely to start services in the next few months.
