Bharti Airtel Ltd on Tuesday reported a 74.9 per cent decline in consolidated net profit for the first quarter ended June 30, 2017 at ₹367 crore (₹1,462 crore).
The consolidated net profit for the quarter under review was also lower than the net profit of ₹373 crore recorded in the March quarter.
Total revenues for the June quarter declined 14 per cent to ₹21,958 crore (₹25,546 crore).
The latest June quarter bottomline performance was weighed down by 10 per cent decline in India revenues, primarily due to revenues from mobile market dropping 14.1 per cent. The overall EBITDA margin was down 1.9 percentage points at 35.6 per cent (37.5 per cent).
The mobile market in India remains turbulent in the current quarter as well, due to disruptive pricing by a new operator, said a company statement. Mobile data traffic in India has grown three-fold to 472 billion MBs in the quarter from 158 billion MBs in the corresponding quarter last year. Mobile broadband customers in India increased by 33.7 per cent to 48.9 million from 36.6 million in the corresponding quarter last year.
On a consolidated basis, mobile data traffic stood at 527 million MBs, registering a year-on-year growth of 178 per cent on an underlying basis. Mobile data revenues for the quarter stood at ₹3,765 crore, a year-on-year drop of 16.8 per cent on an underlying basis.
Commenting on the first quarter financial performance, Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and CEO, India & South Asia, said pricing disruption in the Indian telecom market caused by the entry of a new operator (Jio) continued with industry revenues declining over 15 per cent year-on-year, creating further stress on sector profitability, cash flows and leverage.
“Consequently, our revenues declined 10 per cent and EBIDTA margin eroded by 5.3 per cent year-on-year,” Vittal said in a statement here.
Its consolidated net debt has decreased to ₹87,840 crore from ₹91,400 crore. In constant currency terms, Bharti Airtel’s Africa underlying revenues grew by 1.5 per cent year-on-year. Meanwhile, the active Airtel Money customer base stood at 8.7 million, increasing the total transaction value on Airtel money platform by 31.4 per cent to $4.3 billion.