Bharti Airtel gains after Q1 result

Bharti Airtel gained 3.33% to Rs 334.75 at 9:49 IST on the BSE after the company reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 2866 crore in Q1 June 2019 compared to a consolidated net profit of Rs 97.3 crore in Q1 June 2018.

The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 1 August 2019.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down by 294.97 points or 0.8% to 36,723.83.

On the BSE, 3.24 lakh shares were traded in the counter so far compared with average daily volumes of 4.39 lakh shares in the past two weeks. The stock had hit a high of Rs 338.55 and a low of Rs 327.2 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 371 on 5 July 2019 and a 52-week low of Rs 254.29 on 22 October 2018.

Net sales rose 4.7% to Rs 20,737.90 crore in Q1 June 2019 over Q1 June 2018.

Consolidated earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 24.21% to Rs 8492.6 crore in Q1 June 2019 from 6837 crore in Q1 June 2018. The EBITDA margin grew to 41% in Q1 June 2019 from 34.5% Q1 June 2018.

The average revenue per user (ARPU) grew 22.6% to Rs 129 in Q1 June 2019 from Rs 105 in Q1 June 2018. ARPU grew 5.1% from Rs 123 in Q4 March 2019.

Mobile revenues witnessed a year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth of 3.7%. Mobile data traffic has nearly doubled to 3,904 PBs in the quarter as compared to 2,003 PBs in the corresponding quarter last year. Mobile 4G data customers increased by 63.3% to 95.2 million from 58.3 million in the corresponding quarter last year.

Non mobile businesses continue to perform well. Digital TV revenue witnessed a growth of 15.7% Y-o-Y (decline of 25.5% on reported basis due to reporting changes in DTH pursuant to the new tariff order, leading to content cost becoming a pass-through expense) on an underlying basis. Airtel Business has witnessed a growth of 7.2% Y-o-Y.

In a statement, Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said: "The first quarter of the year has begun with a healthy and equitable growth across all our lines of businesses. Headline pricing remained stable, albeit at low levels. We continue to remain focused on providing value to customers through our rewards platform, Airtel Thanks. This has led to the second consecutive quarter of ARPU increase. We have now extended our flagship Airtel Thanks program to our broadband customers.We remain obsessed about network experience. As a result, we have re-farmed spectrum from 3G networks to 4G across both the 900 as well as 2100 bands and begun the process of shutting down 3G networks in India. This has enabled us to deliver improved indoor coverage as well as enhance our capacities.Our underlying operational efficiency and customer-first mindset keeps us on track to grow our market share."

Bharti Airtel is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa. The company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed home broadband and DTH.

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