BENGALURU: DAS phase III has been a boost for the carriage industry in subscriber additions, revenues, and operating profits. Buoyed by the government’s decision to stick to deadlines for digitisation, the DTH industry in India is continuing its bloom run, if one were to go by the results reported by Bharti Airtel Limited about its Digital TV services (Airtel DTH) for the quarter  and year ended 30 March 2016 (Q1-17, current quarter.

Revenue from Airtel’s DTH segment in Q1-17 increased 22.2 per cent to Rs 836.9 crore as compared to Rs 684.8 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

Airtel’s DTH segment reported EBIT (Earnings before interest and tax) of Rs 121.9 crore (14.6 per cent operating margin) as compared to EBIT of Rs 41.5 crore (6.1 percent operating margin) in Q1-16..

Subscription numbers

Airtel DTH added 4.24 lakh net subscribers in Q1-17 to bring its subscriber base to 121.9 lakh rom 117.25 lakh in the previous quarter. Average revenue per user (ARPU) increased to Rs 233 from Rs 229 in the immediate trailing quarter. Airtel DTH reported a monthly subscriber churn of 0.8 percent in Q1-17, same as the churn in Q1-16 and Q4-16.

Capex

Airtel increased capex for its DTH segment for Q1-17 by Rs 203 crore as compared to the Rs 211.3 during the corresponding quarter of the previous year. The company’s cumulative investments into Airtel DTH increased 19.1 per cent to Rs 6,693.6 crore in the current quarter as compared to Rs 5,621.6 crore in Q1-16.

Bharti Airtel Limited numbers

Airtel DTH contributes just about 4 per cent to Bharti Airtel’s Limited. Bharti Airtel reported total revenue of Rs 25,546.5 crore in Q1-17, 7.9 per cent more than the Rs 23.671 crore in Q1-16..

After accounting for exceptional items (net gains of Rs 82 crore), the consolidated net income for the current quarter stands at Rs 1,462 crore compared to Rs 2,113 crore in corresponding quarter of last year. Q1-16 net Income of Rs 2,113 crore has been re-instated to Ind-AS from previously reported IFRS figures which includes an exceptional gain of Rs 556 crore on account of this reinstatement.

Note: The unit of currency in this report is the Indian rupee - Rs (also conventionally represented by INR). The Indian numbering system or the Vedic numbering system has been used to denote money values. The basic conversion to the international norm would be:

(a) 100,00,000 = 100 lakh = 10,000,000 = 10 million = 1 crore.

(b) 10,000 lakh = 100 crore = 1 arab = 1 billion.