NEW DELHI, July 25: Sunil Mittal owned Bharti Airtel’s Africa business on Thursday reported a net profit of USD 31 million for the first quarter (April-June) as against a loss of USD 151 million in the same quarter of last financial year.
Airtel Africa provides telecommunications and mobile money services, with a presence in 14 countries in Africa, primarily in East Africa and Central and West Africa.
The profitability was impacted by USD 80 million of exceptional derivative and foreign exchange losses (net of tax), arising from the further depreciation in the Nigerian naira during the quarter, the company said in a statement.
Quarterly revenue from operations, however, fell over 16 percent to USD 1156 million during the quarter (April-June) this year compared to USD 1377 million in the same quarter of last year.
Sunil Taldar, Chief executive officer, said “The continued revenue growth momentum once again reflects the resilient demand for our services, with sustained growth in our customer base and usage. Our superior execution enables us to capture these opportunities, whilst retaining our reputation as a cost leader across the industry.”
He, however said that there exists a great opportunity across our markets in both the GSM and mobile money business. A key priority for us is to look for new opportunities to further grow our business especially in the enterprise, fibre and data centre businesses across our footprint in Africa.
“We will build on the strong foundation established over many years to deliver on these new business opportunities. Most importantly, our emphasis is on significantly improving customer experience by simplifying customer journeys and providing best in class network experience to our customers, whilst remaining focused on driving efficiencies across the business,” Taldar added.
The company has initiated a comprehensive cost optimisation programme across the Group. The move has already started delivering results with savings arising in network and distribution costs, and continued opportunities as contract renegotiations continue. “We expect sustainable savings to continue as the year progresses,” he said.
Total customer base grew by 8.6 percent to 155.4 million, the company said adding data customer penetration continues to rise, driving a 13.4 percent increase in data customers to 64.4 million. Data usage increased by 25.1 percent to 6.2 GBs per user, with smartphone penetration increasing 4.7 percent to reach 41.7 percent.
Mobile money subscriber growth of 14.9 percent reflects company’s continued investment into distribution to support increased financial inclusion across its markets. Transaction value increased by 28.7 percent in constant currency with annualized transaction value of USD 120 billion in reported currency.
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) in data grew 9.6 percent and mobile money ARPU growth of 8.8 percent was achieved in constant currency continued to support overall ARPU’s which increased 9.3 per cent YoY, the company stated. (UNI)
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