Bharti Airtel’s Africa unit posted a 39% increase on-year in net profit to reach $90 million for the quarter ended September 2019 on-year, on revenue of $844 million on constant currency terms. This profit growth was driven by rising data consumption and lower finance costs. figures underline the strength of our ability to consistently deliver growth across voice, data and mobile money. In the first 6 months of this financial year, we delivered revenue growth of 11.4% in constant currency terms, with even higher underlying EBITDA growth as we continued to improve our operating leverage and tight focus on costs.
Airtel Africa’s data revenue was up 39% to $229 million on-year and was the largest contributor to growth owing to an increasing number of customers taking to high-speed LTE services, resulting in a 57% growth in data usage. Data average revenue per user (Arpu) rose to 2.5$ up 20% in constant currency terms for the September ended quarter, on-year. Voice revenue in constant currency grew by 3.3% to $491 million largely driven by customer growth driven by stable churn and expansion of distribution infrastructure. Voice Apru however declined by 6% on-year to $1.6 in the quarter due to weakness in Rest of Africa and decrease in interconnect rates across key markets, especially in East Africa which more than offset ARPU growth in Nigeria. The company termed the revenue generated from mobile money revenue as its fastest growing business, which increased by 51% to $79 million on the back of expanded distribution reach.