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NEW DELHI: India’s top mobile phone firm, Bharti Airtel, has reported a nearly 61 percent jump in quarterly profit from a year earlier, helped by easing competition and a wider customer base.
Bharti, the fourth-largest cellular firm globally by subscribers, said in a statement consolidated net profit for the financial quarter to June climbed to 11.08 billion rupees ($184 million), compared with 6.89 billion rupees a year earlier. Revenue jumped 13.3 percent to 229.6 billion rupees.
The profit increase marked a third straight quarter of earnings growth after Bharti clocked nearly four consecutive years of decline.
But the company’s African operations, purchased as part of Bharti’s bold move four years ago to increase its global footprint, racked up more losses.
Net loss for the telecom giant’s African business was $137 million from April to June, compared to $52 million in the corresponding period last year.
The figures come a day after the company announced that it now had 300 million customers, an increase of 100 million in less than two years.
The company, controlled by billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal and one-third owned by Singapore Telecommunications, operates in 20 countries.
Managing director Gopal Vittal said that the pace of growth “across all segments has been satisfying” but highlighted a 68.2 percent growth in revenues from mobile data, according to the Press Trust of India.
Fierce tariff competition had pushed Indian call rates down to among the world’s lowest. But a 2012 court ruling scrapping licenses of some smaller firms over a scandal-tainted spectrum sale, reduced congestion and gave firms scope to raise call prices.