Indian group Bharti Airtel has reported its financial results for the three months ended-30 June 2019 – the first quarter of its 2020 fiscal year – recording consolidated total revenue of INR207.4 billion (USD3.0 billion), up from INR198.0 billion twelve months earlier. EBITDA for the period grew to INR84.9 billion, up from INR68.4 billion a year earlier, although Airtel notes that this increase was affected by a change in accounting standards, without which EBITDA for its Q1 would have been INR69.8 billion. Despite this, net income for the period was a loss of INR28.7 billion from a profit of INR973 million a year earlier, with a 50% year-on-year increase in financing costs to INR31.8 billion partly to blame. Further dragging down the company’s bottom line were its exceptional items costs, which ballooned to INR14.5 billion from earnings of INR5.2 billion in Q1 2019. The bulk of the exceptional item costs – INR15.9 billion – were related to the listing of its Airtel Africa division, the company noted.
In operational terms, Airtel counted a total of 403.7 million subscribers at end-June 2019, compared to 456.6 million a year earlier, and including 383.4 million mobile subscribers (including M2M accounts in India). In its domestic market, the company claimed a total of 276.8 million mobile subscribers, down from 340.8 million in June 2018, although 95.2 million of those were 4G users – up from 58.3 million twelve months earlier.