MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel Ltd, India’s largest telecom operator, posted a 22.2 percent fall in profit in its latest quarter, missing analyst estimates due to lower call rates.
Cheaper call rates cut average revenue per user for the company’s voice business, which still accounts for more than three-quarters of the Bharti’s India revenue.
With the number of smartphones rapidly increasing in India, mobile carriers are banking on high-margin data services. Bharti said on Thursday that data revenue rose 50.6 percent for its India business, helped by new customers signing up to the company’s 3G and 4G data services.
Bharti Airtel ramped up coverage last year in anticipation of a 4G launch by rival Reliance Jio, the telecoms unit of conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd.. Consolidated net profit fell to 11.17 billion rupees ($163.84 million) in the fiscal third quarter to Dec. 31, from 14.37 billion rupees a year earlier, Bharti said.
Analysts had on average expected a net profit of 12.64 billion rupees, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters. Bharti said total revenue rose 3.7 percent to 240.66 billion rupees. Seperately, the company said it will merge its Bangladesh business with a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Axiata Group Bhd.
