Five things you need to know about Bharti Airtel’s Q1 result

Key Highlights

• Consolidated profit for Airtel was lowest in over four years.
• Mobile data revenues fell 16.8% YoY.
• Airtel's ARPU was Rs 154 in Q1 which was down 21% YoY growth.

India’s largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel announced its first quarter ending June 30 of the fiscal year FY18 results on Tuesday and reported a dip in net profit that was nearly 75%.

“The pricing disruption in the Indian telecom market caused by the entry of a new operator continued with industry revenues declining over 15% Y-o-Y, creating further stress on sector profitability, cash flows and leverage,” said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia.

For the third quarter now the operator’s revenues have been impacted by the entry of Reliance Jio in September last year that wooed subscribers with free data packs and unlimited voice calls.

The company's average revenue per user stood at Rs 154 which was down 21% YoY growth, Airtel said. Last year the company's ARPU in the same corresponding period stood at Rs 194.

Here’s five things you may have missed from the operator’s results.

• Airtel announced a dip in profit on a consolidated basis which fell to Rs 367 crore in Q1. This was the smallest profit reported by the company in 18 quarters since December 2012, a Reuters report said.
• Total revenues of Airtel were down 11.1% YoY in Q1 FY18 at Rs 21,958 crore. However this was higher than the quarter ending March 2016 which was at Rs 21,935 crore. Coincidentally Jio started charging for its services for the first time at the end of March; which analysts said could imply easing of pressure.
• During the quarter Airtel rolled out offers on data including free data for three months as its ‘Monsoon surprise.’ Mobile data traffic more than doubled, the company said at 527 billion megabytes in the quarter. This was an underlying growth of 178.0% Y-o-Y, the company said.
• Consequently its mobile data revenues fell on the back of freebies. Mobile Data revenues stood at Rs 3,765 crore. This was down 16.8% Y-o-Y on an underlying basis, the company said.
• Total Indian mobile services customer base at the end of June was 280,647, the company said; while its overall customers stood at 37.9 crore across 17 countries.

Also Read: Bharti Airtel's net income drops by 75% as Jio disrupts profits