JM Financial maintained its ‘Buy’ rating on Bharti Airtel, with a 12-month price target of Rs 2,450, implying an upside of 29% from the current market price. The brokerage said that the company’s ARPU growth story remains intact on the back of multiple levers, which is a long runway.
Need for Tariff repair and ARPU growth
JM Financial emphasise a critical need for tariff repair in the Indian wireless industry to sustain long-term growth and improve the Return on Capital Employed (RoCE), especially given the heavy capital expenditure (capex) required for 5G. The brokerage estimates that wireless Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) will grow at a 12% CAGR between FY26 and FY29, driven by regular tariff hikes and premiumization strategies.
Premiumisation strategy
A core part of Bharti Airtel’s growth involves upgrading its customer base. The brokerage noted that the company has a significant opportunity to upgrade almost 90 million subscribers to postpaid and more than 200 million feature phone users to smartphones. This strategy is expected to be a healthy driver of ARPU growth.
5G and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) transition
The telecom giant is executing a phased transition of its mobile wireless customers from 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) to 5G Standalone (SA) networks. The company’s FWA network already operates at scale on SA. By the end of FY26, Bharti Airtel’s 5G subscriber base grew to 188 million, and the 5G network was already handling about 50% of total network traffic.
Aggressive expansion in home services
The company is rapidly scaling its “fibre-first” strategy, adding roughly 8 million fibre home passes in FY26 to reach a total of 45 million. Additionally, the company accelerated the launch of FWA services across more than 3,300 cities, resulting in an FWA subscriber base of over 3 million by the end of FY26.
Expansion of new growth engines
JM Financial highlighted the growth of Bharti Airtel’s data centre arm, Nxtra, which aims to expand its capacity to 1GW over the coming years. Other emerging growth areas include Airtel Cloud and financial services; specifically, Airtel Money recently received RBI approval to operate as a non-deposit-taking NBFC and is slated for a massive Rs 20,000 crore investment to strengthen digital lending.
Bharti Airtel share price performance
The share of Bharti Airtel has risen 0.6% in the last five trading days. The stock has increased 5.2% in the last one month. However, the telecom stock has dropped 4% in the past six months. Bharti Airtel’s share price has remained flat over the previous 12 months.
Bharti Airtel Q4FY26
The company posted a fall of 34% year-over-year in net profit, which came in at Rs 7,325 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. The firm reported consolidated net profit of Rs 11,021 crore in the year-ago period. The company’s profit was boosted by a net tax gain of Rs 2,892 crore in the year-ago quarter.
Its consolidated revenue rose 16% YoY to Rs 55,383 crore Q4FY26, up from Rs 47,876 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago.
The company also announced a final dividend of Rs 24 per fully paid-up equity share and Rs 6 per partly paid-up equity share, where call money remains unpaid.
