By IANS,
New Delhi : Telecom major Bharti Airtel Ltd Friday said its consolidated revenue grew 42 percent to Rs.90.2 billion (Rs.9,020 crore) for the quarter ended Sep 30, 2008.
Its net income stood at Rs.20.46 billion ($415 million) in the second quarter, up 27 percent from Rs.16.14 billion a year earlier, the company said here.
The increase in net income was on account of record subscriber addition in the quarter under review, taking Airtel’s subscriber base to 79.9 million as of Sep 30 – reflecting an increase of 57 percent from the same date last year.
“We have added more than eight million customers in the last quarter, which makes Bharti the third largest telecom company globally,” claimed Manoj Kohli, CEO of Bharti Airtel’s mobile services.
Voluntary customer churn also remained flat at around 1.1 percent, indicating Bharti has not seen much erosion in its subscriber base. “Customer churn level, be it voluntary or company initiatives, shows people still prefer Airtel over other operators,” he said.
”Though the company’s SMS (short messaging services) revenues has fallen 4.3 percent in the September quarter from 4.6 percent a year earlier, 10 percent of our revenues come from value-added services, that is VAS,” Kohli said.
Bharti’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of Rs.36.99 billion (Rs.3,699 crore) grew 37 percent on a year-on-year basis.