tata communications reported a 30 slump in firstquarter profit on wednesday hit by higher interest costs and lower foreign exchange gainsconsolidated net profit for the quarter ended june 30 was 382 billion rupees 466 million compared with 544 billion rupees a year agothe company also plans to raise up to 18 billion rupees by way of a private placement of nonconvertible debenturestotal expenses climbed about 16 to 4458 billion rupees as network and transmission costs rosethe jump in costs outpaced the near11 increase in income from operations to 4771 billion rupees riding on the expansion of the mainstay data services segmentthe company which has been on an acquisition spree to expand its offerings had said in june that it aims to double its data business revenue over the next four yearsin december it acquired american video production firm the switch enterprises and in june it bought usbased communication platform provider kaleyra in a near100 million dealtata communications has been focusing on revenue over margins as it seeks to grab a bigger share of the highly competitive market for cloud cybersecurity and networkingwe are on track with the execution of our strategy and the strengthening of our portfolio will increase the relevance quotient with our enterprise customers as lakshminarayanan managing director and chief executive officer said in a statementin april the company flagged that this fiscal years margins could be at the lower end of its previous projection of 2325 however analysts have said that the margins may fall short of the range after the slew of lossmaking acquisitionsmargins on earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization ebitda fell 352 basis points to 215 last quarter sequentially it fell 117 bpsthe company is now in a position to fund investments and acquisitions while retaining focus on a healthy balance sheet chief financial officer kabir ahmed shakir saidshares of tata communications closed 103 up ahead of results