Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Monday released its fiscal first quarter earnings report with profit at Rs 4159.90 crore, recording a stellar growth of 158.0 per cent in comparison to Rs 1612.50 crore during the corresponding quarter of FY24, surpassing estimates. It posted revenue from operations at Rs 38,506.40 crore, up 2.8 per cent as against Rs 37,440.00 crore during the same period of previous fiscal year, impacted by currency devaluation in Africa. The company EBITDA stood at Rs 19,944 crore.
According to a CNBC TV18 poll, Bharti Airtel was expected to report Q1 profit at Rs 3620 crore and revenue for the period was estimated at Rs 38,500 crore.
This is the first earnings report after the telecom company announced increases in its prepaid and postpaid plan tariffs. However, the impact of the tariff hike will not be seen in Q1 earnings report since the hike became effective starting July 3.
Consolidated mobile data traffic, it said, was at 19,130 PBs in the quarter with a healthy YoY growth of 26.9 per cent. Bharti Airtel’s India revenues for Q1FY25 was recorded at Rs 29,046 crore, up 10.1 per cent YoY. EBITDA margin remained steady at 53.7 per cnt YoY. EBIT margin was recorded at 22.8 per cent, down 126 bps YoY. The company said that the customer base for the period stood at around 409 million. Capex for the quarter was at Rs 6,781 crore.
Mobile revenue was up by 10.5 per cent YoY on the back of improved realisations during the quarter and sustained customer additions. It said that the ARPU for the quarter stood at Rs 211 as compared to Rs 200 in Q1FY24, driven by sustained focus on acquiring quality customers and delivering greater value to them.
“We continue to deliver industry leading ARPU growth along with growing average data usage per data customer. We strengthened our leadership position in the postpaid segment with net adds of 0.8 million in Q1FY25 thereby reaching a customer base of 24 million. Our market share in the smartphone segment saw sustained improvement with an addition of 29.7 million, an increase of 12.9 per cent YoY,” it said in a statement. The company also rolled out additional ~6.3k towers and ~15.5k mobile broadband stations in the quarter.
Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel recorded a revenue growth of 17.6 per cent for its Homes business, driven by healthy customer additions. During the quarter, the company reported 348K customer additions to reach a total base of 8.0 million. The WiFi services are now live in 1317 cities.
Airtel Business delivered revenue growth of 8.3 per cent YoY by leveraging the converged portfolio of Airtel. The revenue of Digital TV remained stable with 16.3 million customer base at the end of quarter.
For Africa business, Bharti Airtel recorded revenue (in constant currency) growth of 19.0 per cent YoY and EBITDA margin (in constant currency) was at 45.3 per cent, down 313 bps YoY. EBIT margin came in at 29.0 per cent. The company said that the customer base stood at 155 million. Capex for the quarter came in at Rs 1,225 crore.
Gopal Vittal, MD, Bharti Airtel, said, “Q1FY25 was yet another steady quarter with India revenue growing at 1.9% sequentially and sustained EBITDA margins expansion to 53.7%. Our stringent focus on driving cost efficiencies is reflected in strong operating leverage. Africa continues to deliver strong underlying constant currency revenue growth.”
“In the recently concluded spectrum auction, we successfully renewed spectrum that was expiring in 6 circles and further bolstered our sub-giga hertz and mid-band holding in key circles by investing Rs 6,857 crore. The industry saw much needed action on tariff repair, which is positive for industry’s financial health amid ongoing large network capex. We continue to believe that industry needs over Rs 300 ARPU at the minimum for financial stability,” he added.