Bharti Airtel bows to competition joins tariff war

03 Nov 2009 Evaluate

The ongoing tariff war was not sustainable and would lead to operators with stronger balance sheets emerge stronger while smaller operators would face “irreparable damage. Now consolidation is inevitable because there are “too many” operators. The price war and one-off factors such as weak rural demand led to the worst profit growth for Bharti in nine consecutive quarters.

Net profit rose 13% to Rs2,320 crore for the September quarter, from Rs2,050 crore for the same period a year ago, but profits fell 8% on a sequential basis. Total revenue grew 9% to Rs9,850 crore ($2.1 billion) over the same period last year while revenues fell almost 1% from the first quarter of the current fiscal year.

Weak monsoon has crimped rural spending. Around 62% of Bharti’s subscribers come from rural areas of the country. Bharti is banking on non-telecom businesses and expanding its product portfolio to include businesses that are related to telecom. Currently, 35% of the firm’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a measure of operating profits, is from non-mobile businesses.

Bharti added 8.1 million mobile users in the quarter to reach a total of 110.5 million at end-September, or 23% of the total subscribers in India, 43% more than in the year-ago quarter. Interestingly, key metrics such as average revenue per user fell 24% to Rs252 from a year ago, as more than half of Bharti’s new users came from rural areas, where customers tend to spend less than in urban areas. Average minutes of usage fell 15% to 450 minutes. The Ebitda margin, a key gauge of profitability, was 42.1%, compared with 41% in the year-ago quarter.crackcrack

Bharti Airtel Share Price

2107.70 4.20 (0.20%)
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