Bharti Airtel connects gains on plan to boost rural reach

Bharti Airtel rose 4.09% to Rs 846.55 at 14:41 IST on reports it plans to double its number of telephone towers in a bid to increase its rural reach.
The BSE Sensex, meanwhile, was up 267 points or 1.81% to 14,242, in volatile trade.
On BSE, 1.66 lakh shares were traded on the counter today. The scrip had an average daily volume of 2.31 lakh shares in the past one quarter.
Bharti Airtel had hit a high of Rs 849.50 and a low of Rs 811.25 so far during the day. The stock had touched a 52-week high of Rs 960 on 26 July 2007 and 52 week low of Rs382 on 24 August 2006.
The scrip of India's largest cellular services provider had underperformed the market over the last one month to 21 August 2007, declining 13.58 % compared to the Sensex’s fall of 11.08%. It had also underperformed the market over the past quarter, declining 4.24% compared to the Sensex’s slide of 2.6%.
From a recent high of Rs 885.80 on 8 August 2007 the scrip declined 8.19% to Rs 813.20 on 21 August 2007.
The company's current equity is Rs 1897.15 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.
The current price of Rs 846.55 discounts its Q1 June 2007 annualised EPS of Rs 30 (as per consolidated Indian GAAP results) by a PE multiple of 28.21.
As per reports, Bharti Airtel will double its number of telephone towers to 80,000 by March 2008, in bid to increase its rural reach and garner substantial market share in the largely untapped rural market.
Bharti Airtel announced on 7 August 2007 that its subsidiary plans to start direct-to-home satellite TV services by the final quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2008. Bharti Airtel said its Bharti Telemedia unit had received a letter of intent from the Indian government to commence the services.
Net profit of Bharti Airtel rose 73.50% to Rs 1412.92 crore on 52.39% rise in sales to Rs 5611.62 crore in Q1 June 2007 over Q1 June 2006. The results were announced on 26 July 2007.
Bharti Enterprises, the parent of Bharti Airtel, said in July that one of its group companies had bought a 4.99% in the telecom firm from Vodafone. The purchase takes Bharti's group's voting interest in Bharti Airtel to more than 50%.
On 18 July 2007, Bharti Airtel said it had awarded to Ericsson an estimated $2-billion expansion contract, including expansion of its GSM/EDGE network and providing capacity management.