Bharti Airtel reported a solid 9.2% increase in revenue for its fiscal first quarter, in what the company said was a sign the Indian telecom sector is finally starting to stabilize.
Total consolidated revenue grew to 202.6 billion rupees ($3.33 billion). Revenue from India increased 11.6% year-on-year, with most of the domestic growth coming from its local mobile business.
Airtel's net profit before tax climbed 31.2% to 16.13 billion rupees, but net profit declined for the 14th straight quarter to 6.89 billion rupees.
The operator's decision to effectively double its standard voice rates, coupled with increased MoU, led to a 16 rupee improvement in ARPU to 200 rupees.
Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said the operator's Indian results for the quarter “reflect
rationality returning to the sector, which needs to be complemented by a more enabling regulatory environment for a deeper penetration of telecom and broadband services.”
Net revenue from the company's African operations meanwhile increased 8.9% year-on-year, while pre-tax profit from the segment grew 5.8% to 3.6 billion rupees.
The operator's South Asian operations made a pre-tax loss of just over 1 billion rupees, but this was an improvement on the 1.4 billion rupee loss from a year earlier.
Airtel's total mobile customer base grew 5.3% year-on-year to nearly 263.2 million. Its Indian operations accounted for 191 million of these, while its African subsidiaries accounted for a combined 64.2 million.