Indian telecoms group Bharti Airtel has booked total revenues of INR265.2 billion (USD3.6 billion) for the three months to end-December 2020, up from INR250.6 billion in the preceding quarter and INR213.4 billion in the year-ago period. The growth was driven by expansion in the operator’s domestic market, with turnover from mobile services rising by 25.1% year-on-year to INR190.0 billion on the back of increases in ARPU (up 23.2% y-o-y to INR166) and 4G subscriber growth. Consolidated EBITDA rose by 38% y-o-y to INR121.8 billion. Net loss before exceptional items narrowed to INR3.0 billion from INR10.8 billion a year earlier, whilst consolidated net profit after exceptional items reached INR8.5 billion compared to a loss of INR10.4 billion in the period to end-December 2019.
Across the group the company counted a total of 457.995 million customers, an increase of 9.4% y-o-y, including 336.24 million in India (8.9%), 2.868 million in South Asia (down 2.2% y-o-y) and 118.903 million across its African markets (11.0% y-o-y). Airtel’s domestic mobile division counted a total of 307.948 million users including 165.629 million 4G users, up from 283.036 million and 123.793 million respectively at end-December 2019. Over that period, data traffic on Airtel’s network rose by 52.4% to 8.453 million TB, with average data usage per customer rising from 13.9GB to 16.8GB.
Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal commented on the results, saying: ‘Despite the unprecedented volatility that we have confronted through the year, we delivered another strong performance this quarter. This consistency in performance was across every part of our portfolio, as reflected in market share growth across all our business segments … The main highlight of the quarter was the [approximately] 13 Million 4G customers we added in our wireless business. As a result, we grew our revenues by [around] 25% over the same period last year and margins expanded. We are also proud to have become India’s first Telco to have demonstrated a live 5G service over a commercial network in Hyderabad city. This reaffirms our strategy to win with quality customers.’