Airtel Q1 profit jumps 40% YoY, ARPU at industry-best Rs 250

Bharti Airtel’s consolidated net profit surged nearly 40% on-year in the June quarter, as India's second-largest telco added more higher paying smartphone users that boosted data consumption and the average revenue per user (ARPU). The earnings, however, missed analyst estimates.



Airtel’s quarterly net profit stood at Rs 5,948 crore, compared with Rs 4,255 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. Analysts had penciled in net profit at ABC.




The Sunil Mittal-led telco’s bottom line, however, fell 46% sequentially from Rs 11,021.8 crore in the March quarter. In the previous quarter, the company benefited from tax-led exceptional gains.



The telco’s consolidated revenue rose 18% on-year to Rs 49,462.60 crore, from a year earlier, driven by strong performance in India and a rebound in Africa on reported currency.

“We delivered another quarter of consistent growth, with consolidated revenues at 49,463 crores growing 3.3% on a sequential basis. Our India revenue, including Passive Infrastructure Services, increased by 2.3% sequentially. Africa reported solid performance with 6.7% growth in constant currency,” Gopal Vittal, vice-chairman and MD, Bharti Airtel said in a statement. “...Our balance sheet continues to demonstrate strength, supported by solid cash flow generation and disciplined capital allocation”.


For Airtel, this is the 15th consecutive quarter in the black, after six straight losses earlier.

India mobile revenues, which contribute around 73% to the total, grew 22% on-year to Rs 27,396.60 crore, driven by ARPU improvement and continued strong additions of smartphone customers, the company said.

Airtel’s ARPU — a key performance metric — grew 2.1% sequentially to Rs 250 in the fiscal first quarter. It’s the highest in the sector with market leader Reliance Jio’s ARPU at Rs 208.8.

India business revenue (including passive infrastructure services) rose 16% on-year to Rs 37.584.6 crore backed by strong data usage growth and high-end customer additions. across its mobile and homes business.

“The miss in the India mobile segment was offset by the beat in home broadband quarter; on quarter India mobile revenue growth at 2.9% was marginally lower than expected, especially considering an extra day in the quarter,” Balaji Subramanian, vice-president, IIFL Securities, said in a report.

Earlier this month, Jio had reported 25% on-year growth in net profit for the June quarter at Rs 7,110 crore on an 19% on-year growth in revenue from operations at Rs 41.054 crore.

Subramanian said that Airtel continued to fare better than Jio in 1Q. “Data traffic jumped around 7% to 251PB/day. For reference, Jio’s data traffic stood at an est. 344PB/day in 1Q (after rising 6% qoq).”
The Airtel stock closed 0.77% higher at Rs 1929.75 on the BSE. Results were announced after market hours.
Airtel added 1.2 million customers in the April-June period - compared with Jio’s 9.9 million - pushing its mobile user base to 362.79 million. Monthly churn grew to 2.7% from 2.3% in the preceding quarter.

The company added nearly 3.9 million 4G/5G users sequentially, boosting the base of such top-end users to 280.69 million, which makes up 78.5% of the overall mobile user base, up from 77.8% in the March quarter. Postpaid net additions stood at 0.7 million, taking the postpaid user base, including IoT and M2M connections, to 71.23 million.

Airtel’s average data usage per subscriber per month grew 7.2% sequentially to 26.9 GB. Voice usage fell from 1,163 minutes to 1,143 minutes sequentially.

Overall, Airtel ended the fiscal first quarter with nearly 436.09 million customers, including fixed broadband, DTH, and enterprise. Including other geographies like Africa’s 14 countries, the company’s consolidated user base stood at 605.48 million.

Operating margins of its India business expanded by 3.8 percentage points on year to 59.4% in the June quarter, and from 57.2% in the January-March period.
Airtel has been rapidly expanding its countrywide 5G network in India since October 2022, but most of its expansion is over. Airtel’s quarterly capex spends were 42.3% lower sequentially at Rs 8,307 crore, out of which Rs 2,958.8 crore were on mobile services in India, with the telco having largely completed most of the 5G rollouts across the country.

Consolidated net debt, including lease obligations, stood at Rs 1.91 lakh-crore in the quarter ended June.

IIFL added that the net debt-to-Ebitda ratio dipped below 2x - 1.93x from 2.23X in 4QFY25 - after 15 years. “This was aided by strong underlying FCF (free cash flow) generation and a sharp fall in capex (which should partly mean-revert going ahead).”
Consolidated net finance costs for the quarter were at Rs 5,199.3 crore, down 1.5% sequentially from Rs 5,283.6 crore in the March quarter.