Airtel net falls 28 pc as competition bites

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Though Bharti Airtel is high on launching 4G network in India, it couldn't avert the ninth straight quarterly profit decline. That has been attributed to intense price competition and losses on foreign exchange eroded earnings.

Consolidated net profit fell to Rs. 10.06 billion in the fourth quarter ended March from Rs. 14 billion a year earlier, Bharti said on Wednesday. That missed the average estimate of Rs. 12.12 billion in a survey of 19 analysts by Reuters.

Also read: Airtel launches India's first 4G service

Bharti, nearly a third owned by Southeast Asia's top phone carrier SingTel operates in 20 countries across Asia and Africa.

In 2010, the company paid $9 billion to acquire most of the African operations of Kuwait's Zain, making Bharti the world's fifth-largest mobile phone carrier.

Bharti, controlled by billionaire Sunil Mittal, had 181 million customers in India as of end-March, or almost a fifth of the market of more than 900 million.