Bharti Airtel's quarterly profit drops 49 percent

India's biggest telecommunications company Bharti Airtel says quarterly net profit fell by nearly half to 5.1 billion rupees ($94.7 million). It blamed the steep drop in part on higher taxes.

The company said revenue for the January-March final quarter of its fiscal year rose 9.2 percent from a year earlier to 205 billion rupees ($3.8 billion).

The company said it faced a tax increase of 1.3 billion rupees ($24.8 million) for the quarter over the previous year, cutting into profits.

India's mobile phone companies have been in a price war for several years that has dented earnings but Bharti said the situation eased in the latest quarter.

Higher operating expenses also brought per-tax profit down by about a quarter.