Bharti Airtel Limited today announced its unaudited consolidated and standalone financial results for the quarter ending June 30, 2019. Airtel’s revenue from its Digital TV services stood at Rs 7,389 Mn (Rs11,478 Mn on a comparable basis) vis-à-vis Rs 9,924 Mn in the corresponding quarter last year.
The company’s Digital TV services at the end of the quarter had operations in 639 districts. The DTH operator saw a 62.3% growth quarter-on-quarter in net additions. 634K net subscribers were added to the network in the quarter as compared to 391K net subscribers in the preceding quarter. Airtel DTH had 16 million customers as of June 30, 2019.
Subsequent to the new tariff order (NTO), the service providers are responsible only for re-transmission and are not in a position to control content and pricing. Accordingly, the Gross revenue is only to the extent of net value retained i.e. customer payments received net of broadcaster’s fee (erstwhile content charges) w.e.f quarter ended June 30th, 2019.
ARPU for the quarter was at Rs 157 as compared to Rs 229 in the corresponding quarter last year. Adjusted for reporting changes highlighted in the below paragraph, ARPU for the quarter stood at Rs 243. EBITDA for this segment continued to improve and was Rs 5,263 Mn (Rs 4,534 Mn on a comparable basis) as compared to Rs 4,010 Mn in the corresponding quarter last year.
The reported EBITDA margin was 71.2% in the current quarter (39.5% on a comparable basis) as compared to 40.4% in the corresponding quarter last year. EBIT for the quarter was Rs 3,612 Mn (Rs 3,139 Mn on a comparable basis) as compared to Rs 2,084 Mn in the corresponding quarter last year and the resultant EBIT margin was at 48.9% (27.3% on a comparable basis) as compared to 21.0% in the corresponding quarter last year.
During the current quarter, the Company incurred a capital expenditure of Rs 2,437 Mn. The resultant operating free cash flow during the quarter was at Rs 2,826 Mn (Rs 2,097 Mn on a comparable basis) as compared to Rs 2,202 Mn in the corresponding quarter last year.
In a statement, Mr. Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said: “The first quarter of the year has begun with healthy and equitable growth across all our lines of businesses. Headline pricing remained stable, albeit at low levels. We continue to remain focused on providing value to customers through our rewards platform, Airtel Thanks. This has led to the second consecutive quarter of ARPU increase. We have now extended our flagship Airtel Thanks program to our broadband customers. We remain obsessed with network experience. As a result, we have a re-farmed spectrum from 3G networks to 4G across both the 900 as well as 2100 bands and have begun the process of shutting down 3G networks in India. This has enabled us to deliver improved indoor coverage as well as enhance our capacities. Our underlying operational efficiency and customer-first mindset keeps us on track to grow our market share”
