Bharti to transfer towers biz to owned subsidiary

New Delhi, Jan 23: Country's largest cellular private operator Bharti Airtel today said it will hive off its towers for mobile communications and related passive infrastructure to a wholly-owned subsidiary to achieve enhanced operational efficiencies.

The company's board has approved the scheme of transfer of the towers into a subsidiary, to operate under the name of Bharti Infratel.

The company will also venture into Direct To Home (DTH) services through its 100 per cent subsidiary Bharti Telemedia Ltd.

Besides acquisition of a submarine network cable system from Network i2i, jointly owned by Singtel and a Bharti group company, by way of purchase of all the assets for an overall consideration of 110 million dollars is also in the pipeline.

The board has accorded its approval to the scheme which is subject to obtaining requisite approvals.

Bharti today posted a 123 per cent increase in its net profit for the third quarter ended December 31, 2006, at Rs 1,215 crore, as compared to Rs 538.68 crore for the same period an year ago. ''Demand for telecom services continues to be robust across all segments, led by a buoyant economy. In particular, the wireless segment has seen record additions and we believe that this trend is likely to continue,'' Bharti Airtel Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Bharti Mittal said.

The consolidated total revenues for the quarter stood at Rs 4,913 crore, up by 62 per cent. EBITDA of Rs 2,005 crore grew by 79 per cent on year-on-year basis. The Q3 cash profit from operations at Rs 2,137 crore increased by 108 per cent over the corresponding quarter last year.

The revenues and net profit for the nine months ended December 31, 2006 was Rs 13,126 crore and Rs 2,904 crore, a growth of 59 per cent and 84 per cent respectively The company had over 3.37 crore customers as on December 31, 2006, an increase of 92 per cent over the corresponding period last year. Of this, 31.97 million constituted mobile customers.

The company maintained its leadership position through an improved market share of all India mobile subscribers at 21.8 per cent.

UNI