Indian operator Bharti Airtel posted consolidated revenues of INR 283.26 billion for the second quarter ended 30 September 2021, which represents an increase of 18.8 percent year-on-year. Mobile data traffic reached 10,943 PBs in the quarter, up 47.8 percent year-on-year.
India revenues for the second quarter reached INR 198.90 billion, which represents an increase of 18.3 percent year-on-year. Mobile revenues jumped 20.3 percent year-on-year, on account of increasing ARPU and strong 4G customer addition, Airtel said. ARPU for the quarter reached INR 153, up from INR 143 in the year-earlier period. The number of 4G data customers increased by 26.1 percent year-on-year to 192.5 million at 30 September. Over the last 4 quarters, Airtel reports it has added 39.9 million 4G customers to its network. Average data usage per data customer reached 18.6 GB per month and voice usage per customer at 1,053 minutes per month.
Airtel also reports it has deployed 3,500 additional towers and 56,000 mobile broadband base stations in the quarter. Airtel now has over 33 million customers using its Vo-Wi-Fi services. Airtel’s home business segment revenue jumped 21.3 percent year-on-year, following the highest ever customer net additions of 467,000 during the quarter to reach to a total base of 3.8 million at 30 September.
The Airtel Business unit posted an 11.5 percent growth year-on-year, boosted by demand for connectivity, connectivity related services, and CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) across global business and domestic businesses. Airtel earlier announced investment of INR 50 billion to further develop its ‘Nxtra by Airtel’ network of hyperscale and edge data centres by tripling the data centre capacity to over 400MW by 2025 to meet the surging demand.
Airtel’s Digital TV revenue grows 5.7%
Airtel also reports that its Digital TV unit saw its revenue grow by 5.7 percent year-on-year, ending the second quarter with 18 million customers. Airtel’s Digital services offerings attracted a customer base of over 180 million MAUs across Airtel’s key digital assets – Thanks, Wynk, Xstream. There are over 1.2 million retailers transacting and making payments every day on Mitra App, Airtel also said.
Airtel Payments Bank passes 115 million customers milestone
During the quarter, Airtel Payments Bank turned profitable with a total customer base of over 115 million and a Monthly Transacting Users (MTU) base of over 31 million. EBITDA jumped 24.5 percent year-on-year to INR 140.18 billion.
India non-mobile and Africa business contributes 17.7 percent and 29.5 percent, respectively, while India mobile contributed 52.8 percent of Airtel’s total revenues in the quarter. This led to an improvement in EBITDA margin to 49.5 percent in September 2021 from 44.9 percent one year earlier. India mobile services EBITDA rose from 42.6 percent to 49.2 percent, while consolidated EBIT increased by 45.4 percent year-on-year to INR 57.56 billion.
Net Income before exceptional items for the quarter reached INR 5.94 billion, while net income after exceptional items for the quarter amounted to INR 11.34 billion.
