Bharti Airtel Reports Loss Of Rs 2,866 Crore In June Quarter

Bharti Airtel on Thursday reported a net loss of Rs 2,866 crore in the April-June period, as against a net profit of Rs 97.3 crore in the corresponding period a year ago. In a regulatory filing after market hours, the private sector telecom company said its revenue from operations stood at Rs 20,737.9 crore in the quarter ended June 30, up 4.74 per cent compared to the year-ago period. Analysts had on an average expected the company to report a loss of Rs 1,017 crore, news agency Reuters reported citing Refinitiv data.

Bharti Airtel said its revenues from India operations grew 2.8 per cent to Rs 15,345 crore in the June quarter. Its Africa revenues rose 10.2 per cent. Bharti Airtel has operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa.

“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," said Gopal Vittal, managing director and CEO, India & South Asia, Bharti Airtel.

New Delhi-based Bharti Airtel said its mobile average revenue per user stood at Rs 129 in the first quarter of financial year 2019-20. However, its monthly churn rate in mobile services business - a measure of the number of customers it lost - grew to 2.6 per cent for the quarter, compared with 2 per cent a year ago.

"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 (average revenue per user) increase."

In a statement, Bharti Airtel said its consolidated mobile data traffic on network grew 94 per cent compared to the corresponding three-month period a year ago.

Shares in Airtel ended 4.10 per cent lower at Rs 323.95 apiece on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), underperfomring the benchmark Sensex index which fell 1.23 amid a broad selloff tracking global cues.

In the fourth quarter of financial year 2018-19, Bharti Airtel had posted a net profit of Rs 107.2 crore, up 29.31 per cent on a year-on-year basis. Its net profit stood at Rs 409.5 crore in the financial year ended March 31, as against Rs 1,099 crore in 2017-18.

(With inputs from Reuters)