New Delhi: Amid a fierce price war unleashed by Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel Limited on Tuesday reported a net loss of Rs.1035 crore in the 3rd quarter of 2019-20 financial year. The telecom operator had reported a massive loss of Rs.23,045 Crore in the 2nd quarter.
The consolidated revenues during the quarter grew by 8.5% at Rs 21,947 crore. Consolidated EBITDA at Rs 9,350 crore increased 48.3% Y-o-Y. Consolidated EBITDA margin increased by 11.4% to 42.6% in the quarter as compared to 31.2% in the corresponding quarter last year. Consolidated mobile data traffic at 5,357 PBs in the quarter has registered a healthy Y-o-Y growth of 73%. India revenues for the quarter grew by 7% to Rs 15,797 crore.
Mobile revenues have witnessed a Y-o-Y growth of 9.6% led by a strong focus on quality customers, up-trading and in some part benefitted by the recent tariff actions, although the full impact of the tariff actions is yet to be seen. Consequently, ARPU has improved from Rs 128 to 135 Q-o-Q. Mobile data traffic has increased to 5,166 PBs in the quarter as compared to 2,996 PBs in the corresponding quarter last year.
“We added about 21 Mn 4G customers to our mobile network and delivered superior value to our customers through the Airtel Thanks program. Data traffic saw strong growth of about 72% Y-o-Y. We are on track to shut down our 3G networks across India and re-farm the 900 and 2100 band spectrum to further boost our 4G footprint to serve the surging demand for high speed data. “While tariff revision undertaken in December 2019 is a welcome step towards repairing the financial health of the industry, we believe tariffs must go up further for enabling the industry to invest in emerging technologies” said MD and CEO, India & South Asia.