Airtel Q1 net up 35% on postpaid, data user surge

New Delhi: Bharti Airtel's consolidated net profit, excluding exceptional items, increased 35.45% year-on-year to ₹8,057.2 crore in the quarter to June, driven by record postpaid net additions and growing smartphone data customers.

Net profit went up 11.21% from ₹7,244.7 crore in the preceding March quarter. The Sunil-Mittal led telecom operator missed Bloomberg estimates, which pegged net profit at about ₹8,070.2 crore for the April-June period. Analysts said Airtel's India mobile revenue at ₹29,928.9 crore was ahead of consensus expectations by 1.5-1.8%.

"Overall, the results were ahead of our estimates. India mobile business is the key driver of Airtel valuation, and the business did well, delivering 9.2% YoY revenue and 11.8% YoY Ebitda growth despite stable tariffs," BNP Paribas said in a report on Tuesday. The telco's consolidated revenue, including the company's African business, increased 18.4% year-on-year to ₹58,539.1 crore, driven by strong performance across India and Africa operations. Consolidated net finance costs were ₹5,263.4 crore, up 4.54% from ₹5,034.8 crore in the March quarter.

"We delivered yet another quarter of strong performance, supported by the resilience of our diversified portfolio and sharp execution across businesses. Our balance sheet remains strong, reflecting disciplined capital allocation and focused investments to future-proof Airtel," Gopal Vittal, executive vice-chairman, Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.

During the quarter, Bharti Airtel added a record one million net postpaid users, its highest ever in a quarter. The telco launched priority coverage access for postpaid users leveraging 5G network slicing tech.

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The company increased its stake in the Africa business to more than 79% through a share swap transaction during the quarter.

India mobile revenue, which accounts for about 73% of the total, increased 9% year-on-year to ₹29,928.9 crore, driven by average revenue per user (ARPU) improvement and continued strong additions of smartphone data customers, the company said. Bharti Airtel's ARPU, a key performance metric, advanced 2.72% sequentially to ₹264 in the June quarter, the highest in the sector. Market leader Reliance Jio's ARPU is ₹215.6.

The telco's India business revenue (including passive infrastructure services) increased 10% year-on-year to ₹41,214 crore, backed by sustained portfolio premiumisation in mobile and strong momentum in homes segment and improved Airtel Business performance.

For Bharti Airtel, this was the 19th consecutive quarter of profits, after six straight losses earlier.

In July, Jio had reported a 6.8% year-on-year increase in net profit to ₹7,167 crore on a 10.7% year-on-year growth in revenue from operations to ₹34,212 crore for the April-June period. Bharti Airtel shares closed 0.28% higher at ₹1,956.5 apiece on the BSE on Tuesday. Results were announced after market hours.

The telco added 3.26 million net users in the April-June period, compared with Jio's 8.9 million, pushing its mobile user base to 376.50 million. Monthly churn increased to 2.6% from 2.4% in the preceding quarter. During the quarter, the company added 5 million smartphone data customers, which now represent 80.5% of its overall mobile base, up from 79.5% in the previous quarter. After record postpaid net additions of 1 million, total postpaid base, including Internet of Things and machine-to-machine connections, stood at 112.77 million.

Bharti Airtel's average data usage per subscriber per month increased 9.3% quarter-on-quarter to 34.4 GB. Voice usage fell 1.4% sequentially to 1135 minutes per customer per month. Overall, the telco ended the June quarter with nearly 491.89 million customers, including fixed broadband, direct to home and enterprise subscribers. Including other markets, such as Africa's 14 countries, the company's consolidated user base stood at 680.88 million.

Bharti Airtel's quarterly capital expenditure was 16.67% lower sequentially at ₹13,386 crore, out of which ₹4,576.4 crore was spent on mobile services in India.