Bharti Airtel posts the highest ever consolidated quarterly revenues

Bharti Airtel Limited announced its audited consolidated Ind AS results for the third quarter ended December 31, 2020.

Q3’21 Performance:
The consolidated revenues for Q3’21 at Rs 26,518 crore grew 24.2% YoY. Consolidated mobile data traffic at 8,191 PBs in the quarter with a healthy YoY growth of 52.9%.

India revenues for Q3’21 at Rs 19,007 crore increased by 25.1% YoY. Mobile revenues grew by 32.4% YoY on account of the improved realizations as well as strong customer addition. ARPU for the quarter came in at Rs 166 as compared to Rs 135 in Q3’20, an outcome of our focus on acquiring quality customers as well as secular upgrading of customers to data.

The company continues to garner a strong share of the 4G net ads in the market. 4G data customers1 increased by 33.8% YoY to 165.6 Mn compared to the previous year. Over the last 4 quarters, the company has added ~42 Mn 4G customers to its network. ARPU continues to be the best in industry – average data usage per data customer at 16.4 GBs/month; while voice usage was at 1,027 mins/customer/month.

The company continues to see strong traction in its post-paid business also and added ~700K post-paid customers this quarter. We continue to invest ahead of the curve to create capacities and provide a brilliant experience to our customers. Several initiatives have also been undertaken to improve Network quality – leveraging digital tools/probes to monitor and improve customer experience, scaling up Vo-Wi-Fi adoption to improve indoor experience. We now have over 18 Mn customers using our Vo-Wi-Fi services.

Homes business segment witnessed a revenue growth of 2.3% YoY with highest ever customer additions of ~215K during the quarter to reach to a total base of 2.79 Mn. We re-calibrated our offering and launched Xstream bundles with content and unlimited internet to accelerate penetration. The company continued to scale up the LCO partnership model to expand its footprint in non-wired cities, extending the model to over 120 cities.

Airtel Business continues to accelerate its momentum with 9.2% YoY growth, driven by demand for connectivity and solutions across global business and domestic businesses. The company continues to expand and grow adjacent verticals such as Data centres, Cloud, Cyber security, Customer relationship management platforms, video-conferencing amongst others.

Digital TV witnessed a growth of 5.8% YoY on an underlying2 basis, on the back of strong customer additions of 485K during the quarter. We continue to make progress through innovative propositions and differential experience to accelerate the business growth.

The Digital services offerings of Airtel continue to see robust growth. MAUs increased to over 190 Mn across our key digital assets – Thanks, Wynk, Xstream. There are over 1.2 million retailers transacting and making payments every day on Mitra App. Online recharges continue to contribute around 50% of overall revenues.

Consolidated EBITDA witnessed an increase of 38.2% YoY to Rs 12,178 crore in Q3’21. This led to an improvement in EBITDA margin from 41.3% in Q3’20 to 45.9% in Q3’21. Incremental EBITDA margins across businesses remained healthy, with mobile services EBITDA improving from 35.9% in Q3’20 to 43.7% in Q3’21.

Consolidated EBIT increased by 134.9% YoY to Rs 4,665 crore. The Consolidated Net loss before exceptional items for the quarter stands at Rs 298 crore. The Consolidated Net income after exceptional items for the quarter stands at Rs 854 crore.
The Net Debt-EBITDA ratio (annualized) and including the impact of leases as on December 31, 2020 is at 3.03 times as compared to 3.40 times as on December 31, 2019. Excluding pending AGR dues, the Net Debt-EBITDA ratio (annualized) is at 2.52 times as on December 31, 2020.

AGR Matter: During the quarter, the Group has filed an application before the Hon’ble Supreme Court inter-alia highlighting basic arithmetical, clerical and computational errors in the DOT demand. The application is pending adjudication.

In a statement, Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said:
“Despite the unprecedented volatility that we have confronted through the year, we delivered another strong performance this quarter. This consistency in performance was across every part of our portfolio, as reflected in market share growth across all our business segments. This has been made possible due to our agility, the continued re-orientation of our business model and our relentless focus on what truly matters – serving our customers. The main highlight of the quarter was the ~13 Million 4G customers we added in our Wireless business. As a result, we grew our revenues by ~25% over the same period last year and margins expanded.

We are also proud to have become India’s first Telco to have demonstrated a LIVE 5G service over a commercial network in Hyderabad city. This reaffirms our strategy to win with quality customers.”

COVID-19
While the pandemic continues, we see a gradual return to normalcy. Our focus continues to be on delivering uninterrupted services and great end user experience while ensuring safety of our employees and partners continues to remain our key priority.

Network: We maintained strong momentum of infrastructure deployment to support growing customer needs. Our network teams continue to ensure urgent response for service restoration where impacted, while simultaneously improving the overall network experience of customers through digital tools and analytics.

Safety and society: Our utmost priority remains safety of our employees and partnerships. We have provided all sanitation essentials to our workforce on the field and stepped up hygiene measures across all our offices. Our offices across the country remain open with voluntary attendance ensuring strict adherence to local regulations. We have ensured comprehensive insurance coverage for our employees, tied up with major hospitals across the country, empanelled network of doctors and extended financial support to our partners wherever critical for medical expenses.

Summary of the Consolidated Statement of Income – represents consolidated Statement of Income as per Indian Accounting Standards (Ind-AS)
CT Bureau