Bharti Airtel Q2 net falls 29% to Rs512 crore

Bharti Airtel Ltd has reported a consolidated net profit of Rs512 crore for the second quarter of the financial year ended 30 September 2013, a 29-per cent fall from the Rs721 crore profit earned during the year earlier quarter.

This is the 15th consecutive quarter of declining profit for Bharti Airtel, the world's fourth-largest mobile phone carrier by number of customers.

New Delhi-based Bharti Airtel, which is nearly one-third owned by Southeast Asia`s top phone carrier SingTel, said the losses have been mainly on the foreign exchange account.

The depreciation of the rupee caused a decline in the company's margins leading to forex restatement and derivative losses of Rs342 crore during the September quarter, against a Rs25 crore loss last year.

Consolidated revenue for the July-September 2013-14 quarter grew 10 per cent to Rs21,324 crore.

Mobile internet revenues at Rs1,503 crore grew more than 100 per cent year-on-year and constituted 39.1 per cent of the overall incremental revenue.

Digital TV revenues increased by 28.8 per cent during the quarter, while revenue from Airtel business-to-business  (B2B) showed a strong growth of 54.4 per cent in South Asia.

International revenues grew 17.9 per cent year-on-year with Africa growing by 16.1 per cent and South Asia growing by 54.4 per cent.

Consolidated EBITDA grew by 15.1 per cent to Rs6,832 crore with margin expanding to 32.0 per cent from 30.6 per cent in the corresponding quarter last year. EBITDA margin improved from 32.6 per cent to 34.8 per cent.

EBIT rose 28.7 per cent year-on-year to Rs2,893 crore, showing a strong growth and a 2 per cent EBIT margin improvement.

The company's consolidated net debt stands reduced to $9.7 billion, with the net debt to EBITDA ratio (in dollar terms) improving to 2.18 times from to 2.59 times at the end of the same quarter last year.