New Delhi - Bharti Airtel's first profit fall in three years puts
more pressure on India's top mobile operator to quickly integrate its
$9bn purchase of Kuwaiti Zain's African assets to cope in a cut-throat
market.
Bharti, 32% owned by Singapore Telecommunications, has been caught in
a margin-destroying price war with Reliance Communications and other
rivals in the world's fastest-growing and arguably the most competitive
market.
In a sector that is signing up 16 million wireless users on average
each month and counts overseas players such as Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo and
Telenor have, call rates have pummeled to as low as 0.7 US cents per
minute.
"The humungous competitive activity to increase market share is only
going to increase in the near future before it leads to consolidation in
the sector," said Rakesh Rawal, head of private wealth management at
Anand Rathi Financial Services.
"Bharti is a long-term play and it remains to be seen how it will use
its overseas presence to boost earnings growth."
Last year, Reliance Comm and Bharti were the only two stocks to fall
in the 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange index, which rose 81%. So far this
year, Bharti is down 9% and Reliance Comm has lost 2% in a steady
market.
Bharti posted a worse-than-expected 8% drop in January-March profit,
its first fall in profit since it began reporting under US GAAP in
2006/07.
Sanjay Kapoor, chief executive of Bharti's South Asian operations
said: "The propensity (for call charges) to drop any further on
financially sound grounds is not there."
In March, Bharti struck a $9bn deal to buy telecoms operations in 15
African countries from Zain, and expects to become the world's No. 5
mobile firm.
The deal by Bharti, which dominates India's mobile market with about
128 million subscribers in the country's 580 million users, comes after
two failed attempts to finalise tie-ups with South Africa's MTN.
Bharti shares, valued at about $26bn, were little changed, after
falling 2% following the results, in a Mumbai market down 0.8%.
Zain deal
Chairperson Sunil Mittal said in a statement Bharti was working
towards a closure of the Zain transaction at the earliest but the
company had not set a timeframe.
The Zain deal must be approved by regulators and governments in at
least two of the African markets have weighed in against the deal. There
is also a dispute about minority ownership of Zain's operations in
Nigeria.
Heavy bidding for 3G radio waves is set to further balloon costs of
Indian telecom firms. Analysts expect each winner to spend up to $3bn
for acquiring the 3G and wireless broadband spectrum, and building
next-generation networks would cost billions of dollars more.
Bharti however said it does not expect extra capital expenditure to
build 3G networks as much of it would be replaced by spending on the
current 2G networks.
In China, the world's biggest mobile market with around 700 million
subscribers, stiff competition among its three major carriers has seen
profits stall or even shrink as they chase less lucrative subscribers in
smaller cities to keep subscriber bases growing.
Bharti's net profit fell 8 percent to 20.55 billion rupees under the
US accounting standards in its fiscal fourth-quarter. Revenue rose 2% to
100.56 billion rupees.
A Reuters poll of 12 brokerages had forecast a net profit of 20.78
billion rupees on revenue of 98.15 billion rupees.
Average revenue per user fell 28% to 220 rupees in Jan-March as more
than half of the new users were from rural areas, where the average
talktime is lower than their urban counterparts.
- Reuters