Bharti Sees Sales Slowdown

Bharti Airtel, India' leading mobile operator, said its revenues rose 9% year-on-year in the quarter ending March 31 to 204.5 billion Indian rupees (3.8 billion US dollars), a marked slowdown on the 12% growth it achieved in the year to March 31. Bharti's mobile services business grew 7% in South Asia and 5% in Africa during the quarter.

Bharti said it "continued its investments in India on 3G to enhance coverage and quality through roll out of 8,411 new sites. Wireless data revenues grew by 66% to 22,362 million rupees during the year (to March 31), accounting for 5.4% of the total wireless revenues (3.5% in the previous year)." 

In Africa, Bharti said the telecoms sector was impacted by "economic headwinds especially in the Francophone countries which have strong linkages to the euro area, currency movements and inflation, and political unrest in some countries or regions. Competitive intensity was high especially in Nigeria where the market leader dropped tariffs by almost 30%. Price tables were subdued across Africa, and the average ARPU declined from 6.4 US dollars to 5.3 US dollars. Data usage is growing rapidly, but the revenue base is still small to neutralize the impact of voice revenue decline."

Bharti added: "Airtel Africa’s network transformation continued with expansion of 3G networks (ending with 5,676 sites across 12 countries) and improving the stability of 2G networks. The airtel money service is now offered across 15 countries. The company tied up with major device manufacturers to aggressively drive sales of data enabled handsets, especially 3G, and tablets." source: Bharti Airtel statement