India’s Bharti Airtel beats Q3 revenue view on rise in 4G users

BHARTI Airtel, India’s No 2 telecom carrier by subscribers, reported a bigger-than-expected increase in third-quarter revenue on Tuesday (Feb 7), helped by 4G subscriber additions and higher revenue per user.

The company’s consolidated revenue from operations rose to 358.04 billion rupees (S$5.7 billion) for the three months ended Dec 31, from 298.67 billion rupees a year earlier.

Analysts, on average, had expected 357.27 billion rupees in revenue, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Airtel said revenue from its India mobile services, which has about 332.24 million subscribers as of the December quarter, rose 20.8 per cent to 193.53 billion rupees.

Its 4G data customers, too, increased by 6.4 million to hit 216.72 million.

Airtel’s average revenue per user (ARPU), a key performance indicator for telecom firms, was at 193 rupees, logging a 1.6 per cent sequential rise and an 18.4 per cent year-on-year increase.

Last month, market leader Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of conglomerate Reliance Industries, said its third-quarter ARPU stood at 178.2 rupees per subscriber per month, an increase of only 0.6 per cent from a quarter ago and a 17.5 per cent climb from a year ago.

Airtel added that mobile data consumption surged by 22.5 per cent to 20.3 GB of usage per customer per month.

The company’s net profit for the December quarter climbed to 15.88 billion rupees from 8.3 billion rupees a year ago.

Airtel shares closed 0.4 per cent lower at 785.9 rupees ahead of the results. They had fallen 5.1 per cent since late October when the company reported September-quarter results that beat analysts’ revenue expectations. REUTERS