Airtel Africa, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, on October 30, reported profit for the quarter ended September at $115 million, down 13.53 percent from $133 million in the corresponding quarter last year.
Its revenue for the quarter came in at $1.2 billion, declining 4.61 percent from $1.3 billion in the year-ago quarter, the company said in a release.
The company’s EBITDA was down 9 percent to $620 million against $682 million. The EBITDA margin of the company improved 80 basis points to 49.8 percent during the quarter.
“I am pleased to report a strong operating performance for the Group despite foreign exchange headwinds in many of our markets and specifically in Nigeria,” said Olusegun Ogunsanya, Group chief executive officer, Airtel Africa, which has operations in 14 African countries.
“The resilient growth in voice, data and mobile money usage levels reflects the inherent demand for these essential services across our footprint, and our six-pillar ‘win-with’ strategy continues to ensure we capture this growth opportunity by expanding our customer base and providing the platform to enable increased usage across the network. This strong momentum is supported by continued cost efficiencies which enabled further EBITDA margin expansion.”
The company had reported losses in the June quarter, due to devaluation of Nigerian currency by their Central Bank. Some impact was also visible in the September quarter.
“Whilst the changes are required for the long-term benefit of the Nigerian economy, the immediate impact of the naira devaluation continues to weigh on our reported financial performance in the period….Despite the challenges of rising diesel prices in Nigeria, we aim to limit the impact with continued operational leverage and further cost efficiencies to deliver an improved EBITDA margin in FY24 versus FY23,” said Ogunsanya.
As of 2 pm, shares of Bharti Airtel traded at Rs 927, up 1.36 percent, on BSE.
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