The telecom major - Airtel announced wider than expected loss for the June 2019 quarter-end (Q1 2020). The company has posted a loss of Rs 2,866 crore against a profit of Rs 97.30 crore in the same period the previous year. Airtel has witnessed an exceptional loss of Rs 1,469.40 crore at the end of June quarter as against its previous years figure of Rs 362.10 crore.

ARPU for the quarter stood at Rs 129 as against Rs 105 during the corresponding quarter during the last year.

The company reported a total consumer of 40.37 crores as on June 30, 2019, a fall of 10.9 per cent as against the corresponding quarter last year's count of 45.66 crores.

The total income of the company has improved marginally by 4.59 per cent to settle at Rs 20,812.50 crore for the quarter ending June 30, 2019, as against the previous year's score of Rs 19,898.90 crore.

The consolidated EBITDA jumped up by 24.20 per cent to touch a whopping Rs 8,492.60 crore as against the reported figure of Rs 6,837 crore in the same period during last year.

In a statement, Airtel's MD and CEO of India and South Asia, Mr Gopal Vittal said that "The first quarter of the year has begun with healthy and equitable growth across all our lines of businesses. Headline pricing remained stable, albeit at low levels. We continue to remain focused on providing value to customers through our rewards platform, Airtel Thanks. This has led to the second consecutive quarter of ARPU increase. We have now extended our flagship Airtel Thanks program to our broadband customers."

He further added that "We remain obsessed about network experience. As a result, we have a re-farmed spectrum from 3G networks to 4G across both the 900 as well as 2100 bands and begun the process of shutting down 3G networks in India. This has enabled us to deliver improved indoor coverage as well as enhance our capacities."

"Our underlying operational efficiency and customer-first mindset keep us on track to grow our market share".

The India revenues of Airtel for the first quarter of 2020 stood at Rs 15,345 crore an increase of 5.5% year-on-year (YoY) basis. The mobile revenue has witnessed a YoY growth of 3.7% in India. The mobile data traffic has surged up nearly doubling up to touch 3,904 PBs in the quarter as against 2,003 PBs in the corresponding quarter last year.

The shares of Airtel closed at Rs 323.95 per piece, down by 4.10% during today's trade session, hours before the announcement of earnings results.