Bharti Airtel on Thursday posted a profit of Rs 14,781.20 crore during the third quarter of FY25, reporting a growth of 505.24 per cent in comparison to Rs 2442.20 crore during the corresponding quarter of FY24. The telecom major recorded Q3 revenue from operations at Rs 45,129.30 crore, up 19.08 per cent as against Rs 37,899.50 crore reported during the third quarter of previous financial year. The revenue growth was driven by strong underlying momentum in India, sustained constant currency growth in Africa and Indus Tower Ltd consolidation effective November 19, 2024. The company EBITDA stood at Rs 24,596.6 crore. Bharti Airtel reported an exceptional gain of Rs 7545.6 crore, primarily due to consolidation of Indus Towers.
The company reported industry leading ARPU growth to reach Rs 245 compared to Rs 208 in Q3FY24.
Gopal Vittal, Vice-Chairman and MD, said, “We delivered another consistent quarter with consolidated revenue of 45,129 crores. Indus Towers consolidation is effective this quarter. India revenue (excluding Indus) grew by 4.8 per cent sequentially. Africa maintained strong constant currency sequential growth trajectory of 5.6 per cent. India mobile delivered strong performance led by residual flow-through of tariff repair and underlying levers of premiumization.”
“We added 6.5 million smartphone users underpinned by our focus on acquiring quality customers and portfolio premiumization. Homes business saw further step up in customer additions with acceleration of FWA expansion. Airtel Business delivered stable performance but continues to remain challenged. We are in the middle of comprehensive re-tooling of our Airtel Business portfolio by stepping-up investments in digital services across Cloud, Security and IoT while shedding very low margin commodity voice and wholesale business. This is likely to impact the top line of this business in the coming quarters but will have an insignificant impact on the margins,” Gopal Vittal added.
Q3 performance across segments
Bharti Airtel India revenues for Q3FY25 stood at Rs 34,654 crore, up 24.6 per cent YoY. Mobile revenues grew 21.4 per cent YoY led by residual impact of tariff flow thru and its focus to premiumize the portfolio. The telecom major further strengthened our leadership position in post-paid segment with sustained momentum in net adds of 0.6 million in Q3FY25 thereby reaching a customer base of 25.3 million.
Bharti Airtel rolled out around 5.2k towers and approximately 16.3k mobile broadband stations in the quarter to expand its network footprint.
The Homes business sustained growth momentum with a revenue growth of 18.7 per cent YoY, driven by strong customer additions. During the quarter, it recorded strong uptick in customer additions of 674 K customers to reach to a total base of 9.2 million. It expanded its home-pass network at accelerated pace of over 1.8 million home passes in the quarter.
Digital TV posted revenue of Rs 761 crore with customer base of 15.8 million. “We continue to gain customer market share with simplified pricing structure, market specific strategy and differentiated converged offerings,” the company said.
Bharti Airtel’s Africa business recorded revenue growth of 21.3 per cent YoY (in constant currency). EBITDA margin (in constant currency) stood at 47.1 per cent, down 1.1 per cent bps YoY. Customer base in the region stood at 163.1 million. And capex for the quarter was at Rs 1,181 crore.
Bharti Airtel’s balance sheet
Bharti Airtel prepaid Rs 3,626 crore in Dec’24 towards deferred liabilities pertaining to spectrum acquired in the year 2016 to the Department of Telecom. With this, Airtel has now prepaid all its spectrum dues that had interest costs higher than 8.65 per cent.
“Our balance sheet remains solid, supported by robust cash generation, prudent capital allocation and continued deleveraging. During the quarter, we prepaid another tranche of Rs 3,626 crore of high-cost spectrum dues. At the same time, we believe the industry needs further tariff repair to ensure sustained investments and long term value creation,” Gopal Vittal said.
Shares of Bharti Airtel were down 2.47 per cent at 6:00 pm to a trading price of Rs 1,619.55.