New Delhi: Bharti Airtel<\/a> consolidated net profit for the fiscal first quarter jumped 467% on-year, on the back of 4G user additions and higher data consumption, besides the residual effect of the price hikes, boosting average revenue per user (ARPU).
India’s second largest telco, however, missed estimates while posting a net profit of Rs 1,606.9 crore, which slumped almost 20% from the fourth quarter of FY22, when it reported a one-time gain of Rs 984.7 crore. Sequential profit also fell as subscriber additions slowed on-quarter and on the back of higher costs, including operational and finance expenses.
This was Airtel<\/a>’s seventh successive quarter in the black after six straight losses earlier. Analysts were expecting net profit of around Rs 1,900 crore.
Sunil Mittal-led Airtel’s ARPU, a key performance metric for telcos, grew to Rs 183 from Rs 178 in the March quarter, and from Rs 146 a year ago, helped by the residual impact of last year’s tariff hikes. Reliance Jio and loss-making Vodafone Idea had clocked ARPUs of Rs 175.7 and Rs 128, respectively in the just ended quarter.
Airtel’s consolidated revenue grew 22% on-year and 3% sequentially to Rs 32,804.6 crore, also helped by a strong performance in Africa and non-mobile businesses, such as enterprise and home broadband.
India’s mobile revenue grew 3.6% sequentially in the fiscal first quarter. Overall, India revenue increased 24% on-year to Rs 23,318.9 crore.
“We continue to deliver strong and sustained growth at 4.5% sequentially. EBITDA margins are now at 50.6%,” Gopal Vittal, MD, said in a statement Monday.
He added that the company’s enterprise and homes business has shown good momentum and delivered strong double-digit growth, improving the diversity of the overall portfolio.
“Airtel’s strategy of winning with quality customers continues to yield good results with an industry<\/a> beating ARPU at Rs 183,” Vittal said.
Net profit was boosted by a one-time gain of Rs 89.8 crore.
An analyst at a leading global brokerage said Airtel's Q1 numbers were slightly weaker than street expectations and the sequential fall in net profit was triggered by a combination of higher net finance costs and a fewer customer adds, amid costlier mobile services.
He added that the ARPU uptick was modest, due to the bare residual impact of last November's tariff hike while the slowdown in 4G user additions reflected sluggish 2G-to-4G upgrades, triggered by reduced smartphone sales.
In the just-ended quarter, Airtel added 1.26 million users on a net basis (compared with 3.12 million in 4QFY22) to end with 32.7 million subscribers. Monthly churn rose to 3% from the preceding quarter as a result of the doubling of rates of the base prepaid plans.
The telco added over 4.47 million 4G users in the June quarter compared with the 5.2 million additions in the January-March period. This was reflected in a 3.6% quarterly and 5.3% yearly growth in average data usage per customer to 19.93 GB. Voice usage per user rose nearly 2% quarterly and 5.7% yearly to 1,104 minutes.
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