Bharti Airtel Ltd, India’s No.2 telecom carrier by subscribers, reported a bigger-than-expected increase in third-quarter revenue on Tuesday, helped by 4G subscriber additions and higher revenue per user.
The company’s consolidated revenue from operations rose to Rs. 358.04 billion ($4.33 billion) for the three months ended December 31, from Rs. 298.67 billion a year earlier.
Analysts, on average, had expected Rs. 357.27 billion in revenue, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Airtel said revenue from its India mobile services, which has about 332.24 million subscribers as of the December quarter, rose 20.8 percent to Rs. 193.53 billion, a Reuters report said.
Its 4G data customers, too, increased by 6.4 million to hit 216.72 million.
Airtel’s average revenue per user (ARPU), a key performance indicator for telecom firms, was at Rs. 193, logging a 1.6 percent sequential rise and an 18.4 percent year-on-year increase.
Last month, market leader Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of conglomerate Reliance Industries said its third-quarter ARPU stood at Rs. 178.2 rupees per subscriber per month, an increase of only 0.6 percent from a quarter ago and a 17.5% climb from a year ago.
Airtel added that mobile data consumption surged by 22.5 percent to 20.3 GB of usage per customer per month.
The company’s net profit for the December quarter climbed to Rs. 15.88 billion rupees from 8.3 billion rupees a year ago.