Telecom tower company Bharti Infratel has reported revenue of  Rs 3,712 crore (+1 percent), EBITDA of Rs 1,953 crore (+28 percent) with operating margin of 52.6 percent and net profit of Rs 887 crore (+39 percent) for the first quarter ended June 30, 2019.
Bharti Infratel said it achieved net additions in co-locations this quarter after drop in net co-locations for the last six consecutive quarters due to consolidation in the telecom industry.

“This trend would continue as the operators are raising significant capital to focus on fresh rollouts of networks to increase both coverage and capacity,” Akhil Gupta, chairman of Bharti Infratel, said.

Co-locations churn on consolidated and standalone basis are 956 and 596, respectively. There are 3,566 co-locations on consolidated basis which are billed during the quarter and actual exits have not happened. Net co-locations additions were 523 on consolidated basis. But the number co-locations dropped by 222 on standalone basis.

Bharti Infratel’s expenses were Rs 17,591 million, or 47 percent of its consolidated revenues from operations. Bharti Infratel spent Rs 13,736 million towards expenses on power and fuel. The other key expenses were operations and maintenance costs of the network of Rs 1,503 million and employee benefits expenses of Rs 1,184 million.

Bharti Infratel incurred capital expenditure (Capex) of Rs 4,196 million. Bharti Infratel owned and operated 40,636 towers with 76,119 co-locations in 11 telecom circles while Indus operated 123,799 towers with 231,256 co-locations in 15 telecom circles.

Bharti Infratel operates ~3,100 solar-powered sites across the network on a consolidated basis, which helps in reducing noise and emissions from DG sets and also in reducing dependency on diesel. Bharti Infratel said over ~41,000 towers across its network are green as of June 30, 2019.