Airtel Africa Plc (AAFL.L) has more than doubled quarterly pretax profit. The company’s better bottom lines for the quarter were mainly due to enlistment of more customers for its mobile and data services. The growth was more pronounced in Nigeria and East Africa, where the company experienced a double digit growth.
Recently, Airtel Africa debuted in the London Stock Exchange, followed by listing in Nigerian Stock Exchange.
Airtel Africa, is a unit of India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. Its pretax profit for the first quarter ended June 30 spiked to US $167.4 million as against US$80.2 million a year ago.The African operations of Airtel are expecting a sustained growth across voice, data and mobile money. The revenue for the quarter ended on June 30, registered an increase of 6.9% to US$795.9 million. In the meantime, the company’s customer base was boosted by a 9.3%, and has risen to 99.7 million despite a hit from currency fluctations.
The profit margin of the company could have been more had it not hit by devaluation of the Zambian Kwacha, Malawian Kwacha and Central African Franc. Because of the devaluation of these currencies, where the company has the operations, the pre-tax profit of the entity has taken a haircut of US$23 million in the quarter. As a result of the better results, the London based shares of the company were up by 3%.Importantly, Airtel Africa is backed by investors including SoftBank Group Corp Warburg Pincus and Temasek Holdings (Private) Ltd. As far as expanding the customer base, Airtel Africa is ahead of its European peers but behind its arch competitor, South Africa based NTS.
