BENGALURU: The DTH segment of India’s largest mobile services provider Airtel DTH reported earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of Rs 97 crore for Q3-2014, 560 per cent more than the Rs 14.7 crore during Q3-2013 and 50.4 per cent more than the Rs 64.5 crore during the immediate trailing quarter.
Airtel’s DTH segment reported a 25.8 per cent growth in revenue during Q3-2014 at Rs 538.4 crore as compared to the Rs 428 crore during Q3-2013 and 6.15 per cent more than the Rs 507.2 crore during Q2-2014.
Overall, Arpu (Average revenue per user) improved by 11.29 per cent to Rs 207 during Q3-2014 as compared to the Rs 186 during Q3-2013 and was 4.55 per cent more than the Rs 198 during the immediate preceding quarter.
The segment reported a 11.57 per cent y-o-y growth in total number of subscribers during Q3-2014 to 88.07 lakhs (100 lakhs = I crore = 1,00,00,000) with a net addition of 2.35 lakh new subscribers and a monthly churn of 0.8 per cent. During the corresponding period of last fiscal, the DTH segment had reported a subscriber base of 78.94 lakh with a net addition of 4.39 lakh and a monthly churn of 1.3 per cent. Corresponding figures for Q2-2014 were q-o-q growth of 2.74 per cent as compared to the 85.72 lakh customers in Q2-2013, with net addition of 1.2 lakh and a monthly churn of 1 per cent.
Airtel DTH segment’s EBIT figures, though negative, also improved. The segment reported a Q3-2014 EBIT of Rs (-108.1) crore, which was 46.9 per cent better than the Q3-2013 EBIT of Rs (-182.8) crore and 26.7 per cent better than the Q2-2014 EBIT of Rs (-147.3) crore.
Though the DTH segment contributed just 3.73 per cent to Bharti Airtel’s India revenues of Rs 14,443 crore during Q3-2014, the company invested 6.37 per cent of its capex spends of Rs 1742 crore in India.
The company invested Rs 110.9 crore in capex for the DTH segment during Q3-2014, this figure was 17.91 per cent lower than the Rs 135.1 crore during Q3-2013, but 6.43 per cent more than the Rs 104.2 crore invested on capex in Q2-2014.
Consequently, the company’s Operating free cash flow (EBITDA-Capex), though negative, improved more than eight fold (8.66 ties) to Rs (-13.9) crore in Q3-2014 as compared to the Rs (-120.4 crore) in Q3-2013 and by almost three times (2.85 times) the Rs (-39.7) crore during Q2-2014.
