Airtel clocks consolidated revenues at Rs 26,518 crore in Q3

Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Wednesday posted consolidated revenues for Q3 21 at Rs 26,518 crore, up by 24 per cent year-on-year.

Its India revenues at Rs 19,007 crore increased by 25 per cent while mobile revenues grew by 32.4 per cent on account of improved realisations as well as strong customer addition.

The average revenue per user (APRU) for the quarter came in at Rs 166 as compared to Rs 135 in Q3 20. Airtel said it is an outcome of focus on acquiring quality customers as well as secular upgrading of customers to data.

The company continues to garner a strong share of the 4G net additions in the market. 4G data customers increased by 33.8 per cent year-on-year to 16.5 crore compared to the previous year.

Over the last four quarters, the company has added 4.2 crore 4G customers to its network with strong traction in post-paid business.

Homes business segment witnessed a revenue growth of 2.3 per cent with customer additions of 2.15 lakh during the quarter to reach to a total base of 28 lakh.

Airtel Business continues to accelerate its momentum with 9.2 per cent growth, driven by demand for connectivity and solutions across global business and domestic businesses. The company continues to expand and grow adjacent verticals such as data centres, cloud, cyber security, customer relationship management platforms and video-conferencing among others.

Digital TV witnessed a growth of 5.8 per cent on an underlying basis due to customer additions of 4.85 lakh during the quarter.

Consolidated EBITDA witnessed an increase of 38.2 per cent year-on-year to Rs 12,178 crore in Q3 21. This led to an improvement in EBITDA margin from 41.3 per cent in Q3 20 to 45.9 per cent in Q3 21.

Incremental EBITDA margins across businesses remained healthy with mobile services EBITDA improving from 35.9 per cent in Q3 20 to 43.7 per cent in Q3 21. Consolidated EBIT increased by 134.9 per cent to Rs 4,665 crore.

Airtel said the consolidated net loss before exceptional items for the quarter stands at Rs 298 crore and consolidated net income after exceptional items at Rs 854 crore.

"Despite the unprecedented volatility that we have confronted through the year, we delivered another strong performance this quarter," said Managing Director and CEO Gopal Vittal.

"This consistency in performance was across every part of our portfolio, as reflected in market share growth across all our business segments," he said in a statement.

"This has been made possible due to our agility, the continued re-orientation of our business model and our relentless focus on what truly matters -- serving our customers."

( With inputs from ANI )