Airtel Africa’s profit after tax for the quarter ended March almost tripled to $154.52 million, from $57.5 million in the last quarter of 2016-17.
This is the second positive margin in the telcos’ eight years of operations on the continent.
“Africa revenues grew by 10.7 per cent year-on-year led by strong growth in data and Airtel money transaction value. Mobile data traffic has grown by 88 per cent to 70 billion megabytes in the quarter as compared with 37 billion MBs in the corresponding quarter last year.
“Data customers increased by 48 per cent to 24.9 million from16.9 million in the corresponding quarter last year,” said Raghunath Mandava, Airtel Africa chief executive.
During the quarter, Bharti Airtel acquired Tigo Rwanda, a transaction that is said to have been completed at the end of January this year.
Its Africa average revenue per user, a key performance metric, fell by 1.8 per cent to $3 year-on-year. As at the end of March this year, Airtel Africa had a data customer base of 24.9 million, accounting for 27.9 per cent of the total customer base compared with 22 per cent in the previous year.
Nilanjan Roy, Airtel global chief financial officer said that the steady improvement across the top and bottom-line on the African operations was driven by the twin engines of data and mobile money, underpinned by strict cost controls.
“We have seen a net revenue growth of 13.4 per cent year-on-year, while the operations expenditure has declined 5.4 per cent in the past year. The business has entered into a sustainable positive cashflow era, which gives us confidence that the investment rationale seven years ago is still valid today,” said Mr Roy.
“Our strategy in Africa is centred on strengthening our distribution model and enhancing the consumer experience via network modernisation.”