India's Bharti Airtel Q3 net up 42pct, beats f'cast
NEW DELHI, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel Ltd (BRTI.BO), India's top mobile services firm, said on Wednesday its quarterly net profit rose 41.7 percent, beating forecasts, as it added more users in the world's fastest growing mobile market.
Bharti, 30.8 percent owned by Southeast Asia's top phone firm SingTel (STEL.SI), said net profit rose to 17.22 billion rupees ($437 million) under U.S. accounting rules in its fiscal third-quarter ended Dec. 31 from 12.15 billion a year earlier.
A Reuters poll of 10 brokerages had forecast a net profit of 17.07 billion rupees for the New Delhi-based firm, which had 55.2 million mobile subscribers at end-December.
Bharti, which has most of its users on the GSM platform, provides mobile services in all 23 service areas in the country.
Shares in Bharti, India's fourth-most valuable firm at more than $41 billion, rose 5.7 percent between October and December, underperforming a 17 percent rise in the benchmark index .BSESN. ($1=39.4 rupees) (Reporting by C. Jacob Kuncheria; Editing by Ranjit Gangadharan)
