Bharti Airtel, India's top mobile phone carrier, on Friday reported a bigger-than-expected 38 per cent fall in quarterly profit, hit by higher interest costs and foreign exchange losses.
Bharti, nearly a third owned by Southeast Asia's biggest phone firm SingTel, said consolidated net profit fell to Rs10.27 billion ($210 million) for its fiscal second quarter ended September from Rs16.61 billion a year earlier, based on international accounting standards.
A Reuters poll of brokerages had expected net profit of Rs12.33 billion for the New Delhi-based firm, which last year acquired mobile operations in 15 African countries in a $9 billion debt-funded deal.
Bharti currently operates in 19 countries across Asia and Africa and is the world's fifth-biggest mobile phone carrier by subscribers. India is the company's biggest market where it had about 173 million mobile users at the end of September.