Airtel revenue market share surges in Q3, closing gap with Reliance Jio

Bharti Airtel stood as the sole gainer of revenue market share (RMS) among Indian telecom operators in the December quarter buoyed by robust revenue growth in nearly all the markets where it operates, showed latest financial data collated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

By contrast, telecom market leader Reliance Jio's RMS was unchanged in the fiscal third quarter amid a weaker show in rural markets and a key metro. Third-ranked Vodafone Idea's (Vi) RMS plunged to an all-time low as it lost revenue share in all 22 telecom circles besides continuing its customer losing streak.

Airtel's strong show halved the RMS gap with Jio year-on-year to 200 basis points (bps) in Q3FY25, the data showed.


Airtel gained 100 bps sequentially, boosting its RMS in the fiscal third quarter to 40% while Jio's was unchanged at 42%. Loss-making Vi's RMS plunged another 150 bps sequentially to 13.5%.

Trai data also showed that Airtel gained 220 bps in RMS year-on-year in the December quarter compared to Jio's modest 30 bps uptick, while Vi lost 250 bps of revenue share. RMS is a key telco performance metric measuring overall telecom market leadership. A basis point is 0.01%.

"Airtel gained revenue share in 21/22 circles in 3Q, losing some only in UP-East, while Jio gained revenue share in 8/22 circles, while Vi lost market share in all 22 circles," Jefferies said, analysing the telcos' Q3FY25 financial data.

The global brokerage added that Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and UP-East contributed to bulk of Jio's RMS gains while the market leader lost revenue share in Mumbai and Bihar in the quarter.

Airtel gained around 260bps in RMS from both Vi and Jio in so-called C-circles or rural markets, suggesting strong traction of its rural 4G expansion strategy. The nation's second-largest telco also maintained market share leadership in metros and A-circles last quarter, reflecting its strength in urban-centric markets.

Vi, which is yet to close its pending ₹25,000 crore debt raise, lost around 240-290 bps of revenue share in urban-centric metros, A/B circles, and a lower 60 bps of RMS in the rural C-circles. This underlined its continuing inability to compete effectively with its bigger and financially-stronger rivals, Airtel and Jio, said experts.

Sunil Mittal-led Airtel has been steadily narrowing the RMS gap with Jio amid an ongoing fierce battle for supremacy in the telecom sector, on the back of strong market execution and revenue gains in both urban and rural markets, say analysts.

To be sure, Airtel had been reporting stronger RMS gains versus Jio as the latter's tariff hike benefits come with a slight lag compared with peers due to a higher mix of longer-validity recharge subscribers.

Accordingly, Jio is likely to reap bigger gains from the industry wide headline rate hikes of July 2024 in Q4FY25 and Q1FY26, the analysts said.

"During Q3FY25, annualised sectoral revenues continued to scale up to a new peak of $32 billion along with telecom sector revenue growth accelerating 14% on-year from $28 billion a year ago, aided by the residual flow-through of industry-wide headline rate hikes undertaken last July," Jefferies said.

Going forward, Jefferies estimates the Indian telecom sector to deliver 14% revenue growth compounded annually to $40 billion over FY25-27, with Airtel and Jio slated to further boost market share gains at Vi's expense. "Vi's broad-based market share loss indicates that market share gains would continue to benefit Jio/Bharti in the near term."