Telecom tower firm Bharti Infratel Ltd’s quarterly consolidated net profit is up 68 per cent to Rs 358 crore on the back of rising infrastructure sharing with other telcos. Revenues of the firm are up 8.5 per cent to Rs 2,622 crore during Q1 FY14 even as EBITDA has risen 19 per cent to Rs 1,055 crore.
Bharti Infratel’s operating free cash flows are also up 65 per cent to Rs 673 crore during the quarter.
Bharti Infratel, which had 82,321 towers at the end of June quarter, saw its sharing revenue per tower per month go up 2 per cent to Rs 65,222 while the sharing revenue per sharing operator per month was up 1.4 per cent to Rs 34,0779.
The company also said Murray Philip King, a non-executive director on Bharti Infratel’s board, has resigned and will be replaced by Mark Chin Kok Chong. King was a representative of SingTel on the board.
Bharti Infratel is backed by a slew of private equity funds including Temasek, KKR & Co, Goldman Sachs, Nomura, Investment Corporation of Dubai, Macquarie, AIF Capital, Citigroup, India Equity Partners and Axa Private Equity.
“With regulatory environment in telecom showing signs of settling down, focused rollout approach by new operators, faster 3G rollouts by existing operators as a result of strong data growth across the country and plans to roll out 4G during the year, we expect deployment and hence, infrastructure sharing is to pick up in the coming quarters,” said Akhil Gupta, managing director of Bharti Infratel.
The company’s scrip was trading at Rs 144.1 on the BSE in mid-day trade, down 3.03 per cent.
Bharti Infratel managed to raise around Rs 4,156 crore or $750 million through its initial public offering (IPO) in December 2012. The issue was priced at Rs 210-220 per share and has been trading at nearly 25 per cent discount since then.
(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)
