Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile telephony services provider, reported a 33% fall in net profit for the year ended March 31 due to higher taxes, higher cost of debt repayments and continued losses in its African operations, acquired in last June for $9 billion.

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Shares of Airtel, which has 166 million subscribers in India and 44 million more in 16 countries across Africa, on Thursday fell 3.52% on the Bombay Stock Exchange to Rs357.60 apiece, giving it a market capitalisation of Rs1.4 lakh crore.

The benchmark Sensex closed the day down 1.4%.

Total revenues, however, grew 42% to Rs59,467 crore even as the net profit slipped 33% to Rs6,047 crore from Rs8,977 crore a year ago.

Gross debt in the African operations stood at Rs45,800 crore, while for the Indian operations, the debt was Rs15,800 crore. During the year, Airtel saw a net interest outgo of Rs1,480 crore, forex losses of Rs683 crore, re-branding expenses Rs340 crore and higher spectrum charges of Rs265 crore in India.

The company, the world’s fifth-largest mobile carrier by number of subscribers, said customer addition in Africa has been impacted by strict know-your-customer requirements in certain markets, more stringent than those prevailing in India, where it is adding over 2million subscribers every month.

“In India, we have been focusing on building a robust 3G network to meet the increasing data needs of a young population,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director at Airtel. “In Africa, we are rapidly expanding our network coverage, improving distribution width and increasing our efficiency and productivity standards.”  Analysts have been expecting African operations to be a drag and estimates that it may take a few more quarters for centralising operations there and hiving off passive infrastructure to generate new sources of revenue.

“Bharti’s results reflect the expected drag from its Africa operations,” said Kamlesh Bhatia, principal analyst at market researcher Gartner Inc. “This was expected as the company attempts to streamline operations in the African sub-continent and service the large debt.”

Continuing competition in the overcrowded Indian telecom market ensured that Airtel’s average revenue per subscriber further slipped to Rs194 from Rs220 a year ago, as it battles new telecom operators who offer cheaper call tariffs and promotional discount schemes to attract new subscribers on to their networks.

Average rate realised per minute also fell from 47 paise a year ago to 43 paise even as the average number of minutes’ usage per subscriber fell to 449 minutes from 468 minutes a year ago.However, on the positive side, the company saw revenues from non-voice segment —- including short-messaging and other data-based services —- increase from nearly 12% of overall mobile revenues a year ago to 15% of revenues.

In mature markets, telecom operators make at least 30% of revenues from non-voice related service offerings. “The India market has entered a new phase with 3G. This is expected to improve the non-voice revenues of operators like Bharti, which have 3G licence,”Gartner’s Bhatia said.