Bharti Airtel Q1 results: Net profit nearly flat at Rs 1,613 cr; ARPU rises to Rs 200

Bharti Airtel Limited announced its audited consolidated results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2023.

Q1’24 Performance:
The consolidated revenues for Q1’24 at Rs 37,440 crore grew 14.1% YoY. Consolidated mobile data traffic at 15,078 PBs in the quarter with a healthy YoY growth of 22.7%.

India revenues for Q1’24 at Rs 26,375 crore, increased by 13.1% YoY. Mobile revenues grew by 12.4% YoY on account of improved realisation as well as strong 4G customer additions during the year. ARPU for the quarter stood at Rs 200 as compared to Rs 183 in Q1’23 on the back of sustained focus on acquiring quality customers and improved realizations on account of premiumization.

We remain at the forefront of transformative projects, as we became first service provider to democratize access to blazing fast 5G speeds to customers travelling on India’s first water metro service in Kochi. Company also launched unlimited 5G for its customers with a view to encourage them to experience the power of Airtel 5G network.

We strengthened our leadership position in Postpaid segment with highest ever net adds of 0.8 Mn in Q1’24 thereby reaching a customer base of 40.4 Mn (including IoT). Airtel business became India’s first enterprise to power over 20 Mn connected devices. We continue to garner strong share of 4G customers in the market and added 24.5 Mn 4G data customers to our network over last year, an increase of 11.9% YoY. We continue to deliver industry leading ARPU along with growing average data usage per data customer at 21.1 GBs/month.

We rolled out ~9.2k towers in the quarter to further strengthen our network coverage and provide seamless connectivity. Our commitment towards providing unparalleled network experience is reflected in our investments as we added ~38.6k towers YoY. We continue to make progress on our ESG agenda. Our efforts have been recognized at prestigious BW Businessworld Sustainable World Conclave 2023 in the Most Sustainable Companies category for creating a positive impact on the environment and society. We were also awarded by Economic Times for Sustainable Organizations 2023.

Homes business maintains its rapid growth trajectory and delivered a revenue growth of 25.4% YoY, result of company’s strategy to harness the growing demand of high-speed and reliable broadband in India. Our focus on digitization and acquiring high value customers led to 413 k customer additions during the quarter to reach to a total base of 6.5 Mn. We continue to accelerate our rollouts on the back of innovative asset light local cable operator partnership model, we are now live in 1225 cities.

Airtel Business continues to strengthen its numero uno position with 15.8% YoY revenue growth by leveraging the converged portfolio of Airtel and harvesting the rapidly increasing demand for data and core connectivity related solutions. Our emerging digital products are also yielding strong results. We partnered with Ministry of Education for end to end management of government’s ed-tech platform – DIKSHA. The DIKSHA application and website will now be powered by Airtel Cloud and will be made seamlessly accessible to students across the country.

Digital TV continues to consolidate its strong market position with 15.9 Mn customer base at the end of quarter. Company’s focus on market specific strategy coupled with simplified pricing and convergence portfolio ensured that the business continues to hold its market share We have been scaling our digital capabilities to deliver best-in-class experience and offering differentiated digital services to our customers. We have robust customer base of 200 Mn+ MAUs across our key digital assets – Thanks, Xstream and Wynk. Our digital services span both across B2B and B2C and include Ads, Cpaas, Airtel IQ, IoT, Cloud, SD-WAN with Airtel finance being the latest addition to leverage the digital capabilities. There are ~1.2 million retailers transacting and making payments every day on Mitra App.

Consolidated EBITDA witnessed an increase of 18.9% YoY to Rs 19,746 crore in Q1’24. This led to an improvement in EBITDA margin from 50.6% in Q1’23 to 52.7% in Q1’24 on the back of sustained focus on our War on Waste program to drive cost optimization. EBITDA margins across businesses remained healthy, with India EBITDA margins improving from 51.0% in Q1’23 to 53.7% in Q1’24. Consolidated EBIT increased by 29.0% YoY to Rs 10,079 crore. The Consolidated Net Income before exceptional items for the quarter stands at Rs 2,902 crore. The Consolidated Net income after exceptional items stood at Rs 1,612 crore.

The Net Debt-EBITDA ratio (annualized) and including the impact of leases as on June 30, 2023 is at 2.63 times. We continue to optimize the capital structure by judiciously allocating capital across our business to strengthen the balance sheet. In a bid to deleverage the balance sheet, we made a part prepayment of Rs 8,024 crore to DoT towards liabilities pertaining to spectrum acquired in 2015 spectrum.

In a statement, Gopal Vittal, MD, said:

“We have delivered yet another quarter of strong and competitive growth across all our businesses. Our consolidated revenue grew sequentially by 4.0%, and EBITDA margin expanded to 52.7%, underscoring the simplicity and execution of our strategy. Our focus on winning quality customers and driving premiumization has helped us add 5.6 Mn new 4G customers and the highest ever postpaid customers in any one quarter. We exit the quarter with an industry leading ARPU of Rs 200. Homes, Enterprise and our digital businesses continue to exhibit strong growth momentum, reflecting the resilience and strength of our overall portfolio. We continue to make strides on our ESG agenda and in leading the charter in India for sustainable practices”

CT Bureau