Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Thursday announced that it has made prepayment of Rs 3,626 crore to the Department of Telecom, thereby fully clearing its liabilities for spectrum it had acquired in 2016 auction. With this payment, Bharti Airtel has now prepaid all its spectrum dues that had interest costs higher than 8.65 per cent, it said in a regulatory filing.
Airtel has prepaid a total of Rs 28,320 crore of spectrum liabilities in this calendar year, the company said.
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Now this is not the first step by Bharti Airtel towards streamlining its financial obligations. Earlier in September as well, Bharti Airtel had announced that it has prepaid Rs 8,465 crore to the Department of Telecom in order to clear its deferred dues against spectrum acquired in 2016. These liabilities carried an interest rate of 9.3 per cent. In June too, the company had prepaid Rs 7,904 crore, clearing all its deferred liabilities related to spectrum purchased in auctions between 2012 and 2015. These were at an even higher interest rates of 9.75 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.
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The telecom company had, in October, announced its fiscal second quarter earnings with profit at Rs 3593.20 crore, posting a growth of 168.0 per cent in comparison to Rs 1340.70 crore during the corresponding quarter of FY24. It had posted revenue from operations at Rs 41,473.30 crore, up 12.0 per cent as against Rs 37,043.80 crore recorded during the same period of previous financial year. The revenue growth, it had stated, was driven by strong momentum in India and sustained constant currency growth in Africa. The company’s EBITDA stood at Rs 21,846.3 crore.
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