Country’s largest operator Bharti Airtel on Tuesday said its consolidated net income plunged nearly 75% to Rs 367 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, 2017, as the telecom market remained “turbulent due to disruptive pricing” by Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio.
The company, which had registered a net income of Rs 1,462 crore in April-June 2016 quarter, posted a 14% decline in consolidated revenues to Rs 21,958 crore as against Rs 25,546 crore in the year-ago quarter. The revenue growth was also impacted due to Nigeria currency devaluation.
“The pricing disruption in the Indian telecom market caused by the entry of a new operator continued with industry revenues declining over 15% year on year, creating further stress on sector profitability, cash flows and leverage,” the company’s MD and CEO (India & South Asia) Gopal Vittal said in a statement.
The operator had seen its consolidated net income decline by 72% is the January-March 2017 quarter too, while warning that the market conditions will remain “turbulent”.
Bharti Airtel’s India revenues for the first quarter of current financial year stood at Rs 17,244 crore, a decline of 10% Y-o-Y, primarily due to drop of 14.1% in mobile services business. The revenue from mobile services decreased to Rs 12,914.7 crore as compared to Rs 15,042 crore in the corresponding quarter. Bharti Airtel’s mobile customers in India grew nearly 10% to 280.6 million.
“The churn has increased to 3.8% for the quarter ending June 30, 2017 compared to 3.6% in the corresponding quarter last year on account of competitive pressures,” the company said. It pointed out that bundled offers with unlimited voice resulted in minutes traffic growth of 34%. Consequently, voice realization per minute dropped by 11.51 paise to 21.98 paise.
Mobile Data usage per customer in India witnessed an increase of 188.8% to 2,611 MBs during the quarter y-o-y. However, data ARPU decreased 22.7% to Rs 156 from Rs 202.
Further, during the quarter the firm’s net interest costs rose to Rs 1,789 crore largely due to increased spectrum related interest costs. Forex and derivative loss for the quarter was at Rs 39 crore compared to loss of Rs 309 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.
The company’s consolidated net debt has decreased to Rs 87,840 crore from Rs 91,400 crore in the previous quarter.
(EOM)
