India's Bharti Airtel profits slump

NEW DELHI: India's top mobile phone firm Bharti Airtel said Wednesday its quarterly net profit plunged by a worse-than-expected 28 percent from a year earlier, hit by costs from its new Africa acquisition.

Net profit slid to 12.15 billion rupees ($273.8 million) for the fiscal first quarter to June from 16.82 billion rupees a year earlier.

But revenues soared 39 percent to 169.75 billion rupees from 122.43 billion rupees as the operator added new customers, the company said in a statement.

"Bharti Airtel has started this fiscal year on a stable note. Revenue growth has been steady across all geographies," Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in a statement,

"Overall, 2011-12 promises to be an exciting year of transformation," he added.

The company's shares were down by 4.15 percent at 414.10 rupees after the results. Analysts had expected Bharti to post a profit of around 15 billion rupees.

The company, India's largest by subscribers, paid $10.7 billion last June for the Africa business of Kuwaiti telecom operator Zain, vaulting the group into the ranks of the world's top five wireless players by subscriber numbers.

But the interest costs of the acquisition have been mounting for Bharti and it has been investing heavily in the loss-making Africa operations as the company moves to integrate it into its global operations.

Performance was also hurt by interest costs from loans taken to finance the purchase of third-generation mobile (3G) spectrum in India.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011