Bharti Airtel Q4 net falls 8%

Bharti Airtel Ltd, India's top mobile operator, posted a worse-than-expected 8% fall in quarterly profit as cheap call charges took a toll in the world's fastest-growing mobile market.

In March, Bharti struck a $9 billion deal to buy telecoms operations in 15 African countries from Kuwaiti Zain, and expects to become the world's No. 5 mobile firm.

India is signing up mobile subscribers at a furious pace -- 16 million a month on average in the past one year including a record 20 million in March -- but stiff competition has send per-second call charges as low as 1100th of a US cent, hitting profitability for companies.

Two new operators have recently launched services, taking the number of mobile firms to 15, while aggressive bidding for 3G radio spectrum will add billions of dollars to costs.

"Bharti Airtel continues to be strongly positioned in India despite a hyper competitive market," chairman Sunil Mittal said in a statement. "We are excited about the prospects of an eventful year ahead."

Bharti's shares were down 1.5% at Rs293.70 by 0350 GMT, after having fallen 2% following the results, in a Mumbai market down 1%.

New Delhi-based Bharti, 32% owned by Southeast Asia's top phone firm SingTel, said net profit fell to Rs20.55 billion ($461 million) under the US accounting standards in its fiscal fourth-quarter from Rs22.39 billion a year ago.

With about 128 million mobile subscribers, Bharti controls almost 22 percent of the Indian market. The company also operates in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Revenue rose 2% to Rs100.56 billion, as Bharti added 8.8 million mobile users in the quarter.

A Reuters poll of 12 brokerages had forecast a net profit of Rs20.78 billion on revenue of Rs98.15 billion.

Average revenue per user fell 28% from a year ago to Rs220 in Jan-March as more than half of the new users were from rural areas, where the average talktime is lower than their urban counterparts.

Minutes of usage also fell 4% to 468 minutes.
($1=Rs44.6)