Airtel Kenya’s parent company, Bharti Airtel has announced its consolidated results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2017. The New Delhi-based telecommunication organization continues to see poor results with a 75% drop in profits, which is the lowest point it has seen in four and half years.
The telco’s consolidated results for the quarter under review surpassed consensus estimates on Net profit. For the same quarter, profit slipped to Rs 367 crore, which is a significant drop from Rs 1,462 crore in a similar quarter in the preceding financial year. The previous quarter (Q4FY17) that ended in March had Rs 373 crore.
A similar trend has been announced for revenues, which have declined by 14% to record Rs 21, 958.
Mobile data traffic more than doubled and at 527 Bn MBs in the quarter; underlying growth of 178.0% Y-o-Y. In addition, consolidated Mobile Data revenues at Rs 3,765 crore, down 16.8% Y-o-Y on an underlying basis.
Similar to its Kenyan subsidiary Airtel Kenya that outed Amazing Data bundles (although it is yet to roll out 4G) and FREE Tubonge deals, Bharti Airtel offers lower voice and data rates. As a result, subscribers have made more calls and accessed mobile internet higher than before, but that has not been sufficient in increasing the company’s overall revenues.
Generally speaking, Bharti Airtel and its subsidiaries has 379.9 million customers across 17 countries. While India’s revenues are down by 10%, Africa’s rose to 1.5% Y-o-Y on an underlying basis.
“Airtel Africa organic revenue growth for the quarter was 1.5% Y-o-Y, though our efforts to optimize unprofitable revenue streams resulted in higher net revenue growth of 3.3%. New KYC norms impacted customer additions and consequently revenue growth in the quarter. The data story in Africa is unfolding well with consumption and revenue increasing by 75% & 11.3% respectively on a Y-o-Y basis. Our focus to deliver a more profitable business model for Africa has resulted in another quarter of EBITDA margin improvement, with underlying margins expanding by 8.1% Y-o-Y from19.9% to 28.0%,” says Mr. Raghunath Mandava, MD and CEO, Africa.
The rest of the data is summarized below.
