Bharti Airtel's consolidated Q1 net profit falls 74%

Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Thursday reported a 74 per cent decline in its consolidated net profit for the April-June quarter 2018-19 on a year-on-year basis.

Its net profit for the first quarter (Q1) of 2018-19 stood at Rs 97.3 crore, down from Rs 367.3 crore reported in the corresponding period of 2017-18, Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

The company reported a total revenue of Rs 20,080 crore for the period under review, nine per cent lower than 21,958.1 crore earned in the Q1 of FY18, it said.

Although its revenue from India and the South Asian region declined by 13.3 per cent to Rs 15,027.8 crore, the revenue from the Africa rose by around nine per cent to Rs 5,284.1 crore.

The company further said its total number of customers stands at 45.7 crore across 16 countries, up 21.2 per cent on a year-on-year basis, excluding divested units.

Commenting on the developments in the quarter ended June Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India and South Asia said: "The acquisition of Telenor's India unit was completed during the quarter, and I am delighted to welcome all the Telenor customers into the Airtel family. Industry pricing continues to remain untenable."

"However, led by our successful bundles, content partnerships and handset upgrade programs, our mobile data traffic surged 355 per cent on a YoY basis," Vittal added.

MD and CEO for the Africa region, Raghunath Mandava said: "With 4G services live across 9 countries and continuing up-gradation of capacities across the OPCOs (operating companies), we remain best placed to capture the ever growing data market. We have rolled out 1,000 broadband towers during the quarter."

--IANS

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