Newsletter
Bharti Airtel rang in a steady second quarter, with revenue and operating earnings beating street expectations.
The key numbers:
Consolidated net profit: up 8.8% to ₹8,887.5 cr vs ₹8,167.4 cr (QoQ)
Revenue: up 4.0% to ₹60,877.5 cr vs ₹58,539 cr (QoQ)
EBITDA: up 4.9% to ₹34,946 cr vs ₹33,303 cr (QoQ)
EBITDA margin: 57.4% vs 57% (QoQ)
What helped: higher average revenue per user (ARPU), stronger customer additions and growth across its mobile, homes and enterprise businesses supported the performance.
Mobile ARPU increased to ₹271 from ₹256 in the year-ago quarter.
India mobile revenue grew 10.1% YoY, supported by higher ARPU and an expanding smartphone data customer base. Airtel added 2.9 million smartphone data customers during the quarter, taking their share to 81% of its total mobile customer base.
Postpaid additions were particularly strong, with a record 1.2 million net additions taking its total postpaid customer base to 31.2 million.
Mobile data usage rose 36.5% YoY to 36.5 GB per customer per month.
Overall, Airtel’s India business revenue increased 9.4% YoY and 2.7% QoQ to ₹42,308 crore, with growth extending beyond mobile services. Its home business remained a key growth driver, with revenue rising 25.3% YoY.
What’s next: Airtel is also looking to build new growth engines beyond its core telecom business.
Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman of Bharti Airtel said the company’s investment in a strategic land parcel during the quarter marked another step towards its goal of building 1 GW of data centre capacity.
