Continued pricing pressure in the domestic market pushed down the largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel’s second quarter consolidated profit by 6.6% sequentially to Rs 343 crore. On a year-on-year basis, the fall in profits was more dramatic. It plunged 76.52%, the fourth straight quarterly decline, Profits for the previous quarter, ended June 2017, stood at Rs 367.3 crore.

Large Indian mobile telephony players like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea have been reeling under reduced revenue and margins since Reliance announced Jio, its 4G data-enabled services a year ago. Jio initially offered customers free services, on the pretext of sampling its services for a few months, before launching discounted services. The strategy seems to have taken a serious toll on the financial health of existing players, who have had to match or reduce the cost of their services to customers.

Bharti Airtel consolidated revenue for the 2QFY18 declined 0.8 quarter-on-quarter to Rs 21,777 crore but its consolidated profit and revenue on year-on-year basis declined 76.5 per cent and 11.66 per cent respectively.

The silver lining in the cloud for Airtel was, however, in the operational level where numbers showed an uptick driven by its Africa business. EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) grew by 2.3 percent sequentially to Rs 8,003.7 crore and margin expanded by 120 basis points to 36.8 percent for the quarter.

Navin Kulkarni of Phillip Capital feels numbers are very strong in current competitive environment. "We should start seeing some upside as Africa business will improve further."

India's largest wireless operator (both in terms of customers and revenues) said voice volumes increased 3.6 percent quarter-on-quarter to 437.1 billion minutes and voice usage per customer rose 2.2 percent to 518 minutes for September quarter, but average revenue per user declined to Rs 145 compared with Rs 154 in previous quarter.

India business revenue during the quarter dropped 5.2 percent sequentially to Rs 12,245 crore and EBITDA slipped 5 percent to Rs 4,208.7 crore due to pricing pressure, but margin increased 10 basis points to 34.4 percent.

Its data customer base increased to 65.77 million at the end of September quarter 2017, higher by 5.1 percent compared with previous quarter. "Total MBs on the network saw a whopping 65.9 percent increase quarter-on-quarter at 783.8 billion minutes and data usage per customer for the quarter stood at 4,087 MB, higher by 56.5 percent QoQ," Bharti said.

In an indication of how Airtel tried to retain its customers from moving to Reliance Jio’s network, mobile data usage per customer during the quarter rose 308% to 4.08 GB per month as compared to 1 GB during the year ago period.

Revenue from its Africa business was strong for the quarter ended September 2017, rising 7.2 percent to Rs 5,203 crore and EBITDA shot up 23.7 percent to Rs 1,684.1 crore with whopping margin expansion of 430 basis points at 32.3 percent compared with previous quarter.

Analysts expect that the worst may be behind Airtel as Jio has been announcing increases in its tariff over the past few months. Though Jio’s average realisation per customer is much lower than its target, ten days ago it announced 13-20% tariff increases for its popular schemes. Taking cue, Airtel stock prices have gained nearly 30% in the last month, touching a high of Rs 519.95 on October 25. It shares touched a low of Rs 283 in November 2016, two months after Jio announced the launch of its services.

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