NEW DELHI (AFP) — India's top mobile phone company Bharti Airtel on Friday reported fourth-quarter net profit leapt 37 percent on surging cellular phone use and it forecast a second growth wave from rural areas.
Net profit for the three months to March 31 soared to 18.5 billion rupees (462 million dollars) from the same period a year ago, beating analyst estimates of about 18 billion rupees, the New Delhi-based company reported.
Revenues climbed 45 percent to 78.2 billion rupees in the world's fastest-growing mobile market, where competition is intense and rates are the cheapest at as low as one cent a minute.
"The Indian telecom story is now entering the second wave of growth which will come from rural India," said billionaire founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal.
Bharti Airtel, more than 30 percent owned by Singapore's SingTelNet, said full-year net profit jumped 57 percent to 67.01 billion rupees.
"This has been another year of record growth for the telecom industry and Bharti Airtel," said Mittal. "Going forward we see another year of strong demand in all business segments."
The results cheered investors, who drove up Bharti shares by 9.61 percent or 81.1 rupees to 925.3.
That helped propel the Mumbai benchmark Sensex index past the 17,000 level for the first time since February. The index closed up 2.42 percent or 404.9 points at 17,125.98 points.
Separately, Mittal called a report by London's Financial Times that Bharti was mulling an offer for MTN Group, Africa's biggest mobile phone firm, "unwarranted" speculation.
Bharti was always scouting for opportunities but "at the moment there is nothing we can report," he told reporters.
MTN has 68.2 million subscribers in over 20 countries and a 33-billion-dollar market capitalisation, while its largest operations are in South Africa, Nigeria and Iran.
The results came as official data showed India added a record 10.16 million mobile subscribers in March, taking the country's total to 261.1 million and giving it the second largest cellular network in the world after China.
Growth has been driven by falling call rates and aggressive network expansion to smaller towns and rural areas.
Bharti, whose total market share stands at 23.8 percent, signed up 6.9 million new customers during the fourth quarter, bringing its total to 64.3 million, of which 61.98 million were mobile subscribers.
For the full year, its total mobile and fixed-line customers jumped by 65 percent.
"The company is gaining market share every month," Mittal said.
The company plans to spend 3.4 billion dollars on capital expenditure in the coming year as it expands network coverage, officials said.
Analysts say India is in the early stages of a telephone boom.
India's mobile growth has been mainly confined to the cities but analysts say the real prize lies in the vast rural hinterland where 70 percent of its more than 1.1 billion population lives.
India's teledensity -- the number of people owning a telephone out of every 100 people -- stands at 26.22 percent, according to official figures.
The rural market should keep profits heading higher with around 55 percent of new subscribers coming from rural areas, the company said.
"Penetration levels are still very poor and this should keep growth happening," said Deven Khanna, a corporate director at Bharti Enterprises, the parent group of Bharti Airtel.
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