Market trends and Bharti Airtel’s lowest close

Talks by the government of disinvestment and fuel subsidies may to some extent lead to improvement of the Indian economy. Decisions are delaying but a ray of hope persists amongst market investors.

On the 22nd of August, the share market fell, snapping the previous two-day rise. Whatever uptrend was witnessed in the India stock market since July was majorly contributed by foreign liquidity flows amounting to around $3 billion. And this has happened even without the government announcing any fiscal reforms.

You can well imagine the positive consequences when fiscal measures get announced by the government! Amid the market players that were a puppet of volatility, one of the biggest losses was faced by Bharti Airtel Ltd. NSE shares, the shares of which fell 3.8 percent to their lowest close (22nd August) since Oct. 2006. News about the potential entry into voice and data segments by Reliance Infotel, a unit of Reliance Industries, has led to Airtel shares downtrend.

Bharti Airtel - 10th Qtr of Squeezed Margins!

Sunil Mittal, controller of Bharti Airtel Ltd, said there is a fall in net profits of about 37% to 7.62 billion rupees as compared to previous year for the first quarter of the fiscal year ending June. This is in contrast to the expectations of analysts where Bharti was likely to post a net profit of 12.7 billion rupees on revenue of 195.79 billion rupees.

With its 2010 venture into Africa and acquiring Kuwaiti Telecom Zain’s operations in 15 countries, Bharti has become world’s fifth largest mobile phone carrier. However, with the high African costs, Bharti is yet to turn the African operations gainful.

Bharti Airtel Ltd NSE shares hit it's new 52 week low today with shares trending around INR 272.75/- 

On his statement on Wednesday, Mittal attributed the fall in telecom revenues in India to the hyper-competition as well as regulatory and tax developments. Despite the voice call prices being stable, the markets are yet to recover from the sharp cuts on prices the war of which started 2 years ago.

Read complete coverage of Bharti Airtel Qtrly results at Reuters India.