New Delhi, July 25 (IANS): Bharti Airtel's consolidated net profit for the 2017-18 first quarter (April-June) dropped by 75 per cent, a company statement said here on Tuesday.

The company posted consolidated net profit of Rs 367 crore for the first quarter of 2017-18 compared with Rs 1,462 crore posted during the same period a year ago.

"The pricing disruption in the Indian telecom market caused by the entry of a new operator continued, with industry revenues declining over 15 per cent year-on-year, creating further stress on sector profitability, cash flows and leverage," said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, Bharti Airtel.

"Consequently, our revenues declined 10 per cent and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) margin eroded by 5.3 per cent year-on-year," he explained.

Vittal said, "We remain committed to providing the best value and experience to our customers and continue to invest towards it. As a result, our network witnessed data and voice traffic growth of 200 per cent and 34 per cent year-n-year respectively. We also added 5.2 million data customers in the last quarter - our highest ever." 

India revenues for first quarter of 2017-18 stood at Rs 17,244 crore, which is a decline of 10 per cent year-on-year, primarily led by mobile drop of 14.1 per cent year-on-year, the company statement said.

"Mobile market remains turbulent in the current quarter as well, due to disruptive pricing by a new operator. Mobile data traffic has grown three-fold to 472 billion MBs in the quarter as compared to 158 billion MBs in the corresponding quarter last year. Mobile broadband customers increased by 33.7 per cent to 48.9 million from 36.6 million in the corresponding quarter last year," the statement said.

The company's consolidated net debt has decreased to Rs 87,840 crore from Rs 91,400 crore in the previous quarter.

The company's shares closed the day's trade at Rs 427.60 per share, up 1.76 per cent at the BSE.