Bharti Infratel, the telecom infrastructure arm of Bharti Airtel, posted a net profit of ₹576 crore for the first quarter of the 2015-16 fiscal, which ended on June 30, up 24 per cent from ₹463 crore during the corresponding period of the previous financial year.
Consolidated figuresConsolidated revenue for the first quarter stood at ₹3,016 crore, up 6 per cent from last year’s ₹2,843 crore.
As of June 30, the company had 86,397 telecom towers, as compared to 85,892 during the same period in 2014-15. Consolidated EBITDA also registered a 10 per cent increase over the year at ₹1,302 crore, which “represents operating margin of 43.2 per cent” according to an official statement released on Wednesday.
Akhil Gupta, Chairman of Bharti Infratel, said the country’s growing Internet user-base expansion represented an opportunity for quality networks to be introduced.
“While India has one of the largest population of Internet users in the world, it ranks amongst the lowest in terms of Internet penetration…This opportunity can only be leveraged by rollout of quality networks and introduction of new technologies by telecom operators. For this, large spectrum investments have already been done,” he said.
Investment push“Incremental investments in additional sites to effectively utilise the spectrum are relatively small, which would eventually result into large number of new deployments by operators.
“Bharti Infratel is part of this revolution and continues to partner with all the operators to rollout data networks at fast pace…” he added.