Bharti Airtel announces consolidated results for Q3FY22

Bharti Airtel Limited today announced its audited consolidated Ind AS results for the third quarter ended December 31, 2021.

Q3’22 performance:
The consolidated revenues for Q3’22 at Rs 29,867 crore grew 18.3% YoY on a comparable basis and 12.6% YoY on a reported basis. Consolidated mobile data traffic at 11,014 PBs in the quarter with a healthy YoY growth of 34.5%.

India revenues for Q3’22 at Rs 20,913 crore increased by 17.9% YoY on a comparable basis and 10.0% YoY on a reported basis. Mobile revenues grew by 19.1% YoY on comparable basis on account of upside in ARPU led by pricing intervention and continued momentum in 4G customer addition. ARPU for the quarter came in at Rs 163 as compared to Rs 146 in Q3’21 on comparable basis. This is an outcome of the company’s unrelenting focus on winning with quality customers by delivering differentiated experience.

The company continues to garner strong share of the 4G customers in the market. 4G data customers2 increased by 18.1% YoY to 195.5 Mn. The company has added 29.9 Mn 4G customers to its network over last year. ARPU continues to be the best in industry, average data usage per data customer at 18.3 GBs/month and voice usage per customer at 1,061 mins /month.

We rolled out additional ~7.8K towers and ~31K mobile broadband base stations in the quarter to provide ubiquitous connectivity and superior network experience. Several initiatives have also been undertaken to improve Network quality – leveraging digital tools/probes to monitor and improve customer experience and scaling up Vo-Wi-Fi adoption to improve indoor experience. We now have over 37 Mn customers using our Vo-Wi-Fi services.

Homes business segment continues to demonstrate strong revenue growth of 40.4% YoY with customer net additions of ~ 341 K during the quarter to reach to a total base of 4.16 Mn. LCO partnership model continues to vitalize our growth, we are now live in  586 cities through this model with overall operations in 672 cities.

Airtel Business continues to accelerate its momentum with 13.4% YoY growth, driven by rapidly increasing demand for data, connectivity related solutions and CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service). Nxtra by Airtel’s launched its third large data center in Chennai, It now operates the largest network of data centers in India with 11 hyperscale and 120 edge data centers.

Revenue of Digital TV remained stable and continued to perpetuate its standing with 18.1 Mn customer base at the end of quarter. We continue to make progress through innovative propositions and differential converged experience to accelerate the business growth.

The Digital services offerings of Airtel continue to remain robust with a healthy engaged customer base of over 184 Mn MAUs across our key digital assets – Thanks, Wynk, Xstream. There are over 1.2 million retailers transacting and making payments every day on Mitra App. Our Digital offerings including cloud communication & adtech platforms continues to gain strong momentum with new customer onboarding During the quarter, Airtel Payments Bank continue to expand its footing with a strong total customer base of over 122 Mn and highly engaged Monthly Transacting Users (MTU) base of over 32 Mn.

Consolidated EBITDA witnessed an increase of 22.4% YoY to Rs 14,905 crore in Q3’22. EBITDA expansion was broad based and the portfolio remains well balanced with India non-mobile and Africa business contributing 17.0% and 30.1% respectively and India mobile contributing 52.9%. This led to an improvement in EBITDA margin from 45.9% in Q3’21 to 49.9% in Q3’22. Incremental EBITDA margins across businesses remained healthy, with India mobile services EBITDA improving from 43.7% in Q3’21 to 49.4% in Q3’22.

Consolidated EBIT increased by 36.0% YoY to Rs 6,345 crore. The Consolidated Net Income before exceptional items for the quarter stands at Rs 807 crore. The Consolidated Net income after exceptional items for the quarter stands at Rs 830 crore.

The Net Debt-EBITDA ratio (annualized) and including the impact of leases as on December 31, 2021 is at 2.67 times as compared to 3.03 times as on December 31, 2020. We pre-paid INR 15,519 crore to clear all deferred liabilities for spectrum acquired in 2014, while continuing to exercise flexibilities towards a stronger and efficient capital structure.

In a statement, Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said:
“We have delivered another quarter of sustained performance across all our business segments. Overall Sequential revenue growth was at 5.4% and EBITDA margins came in at 49.9%. The recent tariff revision for mobile services has gone down well and we are exiting the quarter with an industry leading ARPU of Rs 163. The full impact of the revised mobile tariffs, however, will be visible in the fourth quarter. Our Enterprise, Homes and Africa business continue to deliver strongly, with steady increase in contribution to the overall mix of the portfolio. Our balance sheet is robust and we are now generating healthy free cash flows. This has enabled us to recently prepay some of our spectrum liabilities to the Government thereby reducing the interest burden.

Google’s recent investment is a strong validation of Airtel’s role in being a leading pioneer of India’s digital revolution. Our emerging digital services portfolio across Airtel IQ, AdTech, digital market place, Nxtra and digital banking positions us well to build an Airtel of the future.”

Summary of the consolidated statement of income
Represents consolidated Statement of Income as per Indian Accounting Standards (Ind-AS (Amount in Rs crore, except ratios)

Customer base                                       (Figures in nos, except ratios)

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