Bharti Airtel consolidated revenues for Q1 2018 at Rs 21,958 crore, Y-o-Y drop of 11.1% on an underlying basis (viz. adjusted for Africa/Bangladesh divested operating units and tower assets sale).
The consolidated net income after exceptional items for the quarter stands at Rs. 367 crore compared to Rs. 1,462 crore in corresponding quarter last year.
Consolidated Y-o-Y revenue growth was muted by 2.6% on account of Nigeria currency devaluation. Consolidated mobile data traffic at 527 million MBs in the quarter has registered a strong Y-o-Y growth of 178% on an underlying basis.
India revenues for Q1 2018 stands at Rs. 17,244 crore have declined by 10% Y-o-Y primarily led by mobile drop of 14.1% Y-o-Y.
In constant currency terms, Africa underlying revenues grew by 1.5% Y-o-Y. Data revenues at $ 138 million grew by 11.3% Y-o-Y, led by increase in Data customer base by 19.4% and traffic by 75.0%. Data revenues now contribute to 18.7% of overall Africa revenues vis-à-vis 16.9% in the corresponding quarter last year.
Consolidated mobile data revenues for the quarter at Rs 3,765 crore, Y-o-Y drop of 16.8% on an underlying basis.
Mobile data traffic has grown three fold to 472 billion MBs in the quarter as compared to 158 billion MBs in the corresponding quarter last year. Mobile broadband customers increased by 33.7% to 48.9 Mn from 36.6 Mn in the corresponding quarter last year.
Consolidated EBITDA at Rs 7,823 crore declined 18.4% Y-o-Y with EBITDA margin dropping by 1.9% to 35.6%, led by India SA margin drop of 4.6% Y-o-Y on an underlying basis. The company’s consolidated net debt has decreased to Rs 87,840 crore from Rs 91,400 crore in the previous quarter.
Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia said, “The pricing disruption in the Indian telecom market caused by the entry of a new operator continued with industry revenues declining over 15% Y-o-Y, creating further stress on sector profitability, cash flows and leverage. Consequently, our revenues declined 10% and EBITDA margin eroded by 5.3% Y-o-Y. We remain committed to providing the best value and experience to our customers and continue to invest towards it. As a result, our network witnessed data and voice traffic growth of 200% and 34% Y-o-Y respectively.”
Raghunath Mandava, MD and CEO, Africa said, “New KYC norms impacted customer additions and consequently revenue growth in the quarter. The data story in Africa is unfolding well with consumption and revenue increasing by 75% & 11.3% respectively on a Y-o-Y basis. Our focus to deliver a more profitable business model for Africa has resulted in another quarter of EBITDA margin improvement, with underlying margins expanding by 8.1% Y-o-Y from 19.9% to 28.0%.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.