Bharti Infratel Q3 net profit up 12% on year
Consolidated net profit for the October-December quarter rose to Rs 565 crore from Rs 507 crore in the year-ago period.
Kalyan Parbat
Shares in Bharti Infratel Ltd rose 1.3% after the FTSE said on Friday it would include the mobile tower company to its large cap index starting on Jan. 7.
KOLKATA: Bharti Infratel, India's only listed telecom tower firm, Wednesday said its net profit rose 12% on-year in the fiscal quarter to December 2015, as mobile carriers invested aggressively in 3G and 4G network expansion and rollouts amid surging data consumption.
The company, a unit of India's top mobile carrier Bharti Airtel, said its consolidated revenue in the fiscal third quarter grew 5% on-year at Rs 3,093 crore. Its consolidated Ebitda, in turn, improved to Rs 1,349 crore, reflecting a 6% on-year rise, while consolidated Ebit at Rs 779 crore was also up 9% year-on-year.
Bharti Infratel ended the October-December 2015 quarter with 88,055 towers.
Bharti Infratel Chairman Akhil Gupta said capital expenditure for the telecom sector was on the rise due to "aggressive rollout 3G and 4G networks, encouraged by increasing mobile mobile data usage and focus on quality of service".
He added that the company is seeing a sharp "surge in data installations across our Infratel and Indus business," proving that "these companies shall be major beneficiaries of this accelerated rollout and capex". Bharti Infratel is a stakeholder of Indus Towers, the country's leading tower firm.
Bharti Infratel's stock closed 4.4% up at Rs 381.90 on BSE Wednesday. The results were announced after market hours.
The company, which went public in 2012, is in the business of setting up towers on which telcos mount their base stations --- the electronic devices that emit signals to cellphones.
Bharti Infratel's net profit beat brokerage Credit Suisse's estimate, which had expected a 9.1% rise in the company's net profit in the fiscal third quarter to December 2015.