India's Bharti Airtel revealed its net profit more than doubled in the December quarter, marking the first quarterly profit growth in four years.
The company reported a consolidated net income for its fiscal third quarter of 6.1 billion rupees ($97.7 million), up 115% year-on-year.
Revenue grew 13.3% to 219.39 billion rupees, with revenue from Airtel's domestic operations increasing 10.3%. Mobile data gains contributed to the growth, with data traffic nearly doubling and the company's data subscribers increasing 31.2% to 54.4 million.
Mobile ARPU also improved by 9.7 rupees to 195, perhaps thanks to the recent price rationalization in the Indian market.
Revenue from Airtel's African operations meanwhile improved 21.6% year-on-year in Indian currencies, with overall ARPU growing to $5.80.
“Africa had another quarter of strong growth from the 3G/Data and Airtel Money services across all its markets and we expect this trend to sustain due to [our] large investments in brand and network,” Airtel CEO International Manoj Kohli commented.
“The market growth came back in Nigeria which is the largest telecom market in the continent.”
Bharti Airtel ended the year with 275.2 million mobile customers, including 198.5 million from India and 68.3 million from Africa.