Airtel Africa – the African division of Indian telecoms group Bharti Airtel – has announced its financial results for the three months to end-December 2021, booking a 17.9% year-on-year increase in underlying revenue (in reported currency) to USD1.22 billion. The expansion was driven by substantial improvements in turnover across the board but most notably in the mobile data segment, which saw revenue increase by 34.4% y-o-y from USD294 million to USD395 million. Earnings from voice services, mobile money and other sources grew by 7.4% (to USD606 million), 34.4% (USD148 million) and 15.8% (USD105 million) respectively. Underlying EBITDA for the period was USD605 million compared to USD485 million in the same quarter of 2020, whilst net profit attributable to shareholders grew to USD155 million from USD95 million a year earlier.
Airtel Africa counted a total of 125.8 million subscriptions across its markets, including 45.1 million data users and 25.7 million mobile money accounts, with these figures having risen from 118.9 million (total), 40.6 million (data customers) and 21.5 million (mobile money) in the three months to 31 December 2020. Due in part to the higher number of data subscriptions, ARPU for the group increased from USD2.9 to USD3.3.