FE Editorial : Mr Vittal’s challenge
The Financial Express: Jan 17 2013, 01:47 IST
Given that Bharti Airtel’s new India CEO Gopal Vittal has been with the company before—he was its marketing director in 2006—he’s familiar with the problems the country’s top telco faces, though it has to be said the operating environment then was nothing like what it is now. Customer churns were around 2-3% per month when Vittal looked after marketing for Bharti, they’re in the 9% range now; average revenues per user were around R450 per month in those days, this is down to a mere R177 today. The huge churn, of course, is why Bharti Airtel—all telcos for that matter—have to spend money to acquire 10 customers while just one eventually stays with the firm. It hasn’t helped that the policy environment is also dramatically worse—the government demand for payment for the ‘extra’ spectrum Bharti Airtel has, according to Kotak Institutional Equities, itself lowers the share price by R22 (yesterday’s share price was R342) and the proposal to refarm all 900 MHz spectrum with the older telcos will take away another R51. That is why Bharti Airtel’s share price has fallen from R347 on June 1, 2006, to R342 today while the Sensex rose from 10071 to 19804 during the same period.
Fortunately for Vittal, there has been some improvement in both the operating metrics as well as the policy environment, whether they hold and what he can do to improve things is the question. As far as the policy environment is concerned, the lack of bidders in the last auctions
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