Bharti Airtel Q1 profit zooms 467% to ₹1,607 cr

Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel's net consolidated profit zoomed 466.8% to ₹1,607 crore for the April-June period of FY23 on strong and consistent performance across the portfolio. The telco's net income before exceptional items for Q1 FY23 was ₹1,517 crore.

India's second-largest telecom service provider reported consolidated quarterly revenue of ₹32,805 crore, up 22.2% YoY, shows the company's stock exchange filing.

Bharti Airtel's India revenue was up 23.8% to ₹23,319 crore, while the Africa revenue for April-June rose 15.3% YoY. "ARPU (average revenue per user) for the quarter came in at ₹183 as compared to ₹146 in Q1’22. This is an outcome of the company’s focus on acquiring and retaining quality customers and a relentless obsession with customer experience," says Airtel.

Bharti Airtel's mobile services India revenues rose 27.4% YoY, led by an increase in ARPU and strong 4G customer additions during the three months. The consolidated EBITDA for the quarter was ₹16,604 crore, while the EBITDA margin rose 50.6%, up 150 bps YoY.

Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, says Bharti Airtel continues to deliver strong and sustained growth at 4.5% sequentially. " EBITDA margins are now at 50.6%. Our enterprise and homes business has strong momentum and delivered strong double-digit growth, improving the diversity of the overall portfolio. Airtel’s strategy of winning with quality customers continues to yield good results with an industry-beating ARPU at ₹183," he adds.

Bharti Airtel says it has the widest mobile broadband footprint across the country. During the recently-concluded auction for high-speed 5G spectrum, Airtel says it "acquired 19,867.8 MHz spectrum by securing a pan India footprint of 3.5 GHz, 26 GHz bands and selectively bolstering low & mid-band spectrum" for around ₹43,040 crore.

As per Airtel, this will ensure it would not need to spend any material sum on the spectrum for many years to come. "Specifically on 700 MHz band, we have enough mid-band spectrum to cater to 5G roll out and hence have been judicious on acquiring very high-cost sub-GHz spectrum," says the company.

The company's overall customer base stands at 49.7 crore across 16 countries. This includes the Indian customer base at 36.2 crore, while the rest is in Africa.

Airtel says it added 20.8 Mn 4G customers to its network over last year, an increase of 11.3% YoY. The average data usage per mobile data customer stands at 19.5 GBs per month, while the voice usage per customer is at 1,104 mins per month, says Airtel.

Besides, Airtel says it rolled out an additional 8,000 towers in the quarter. The company's home business also grew at 41.9% YoY, led by healthy additions of 1.4 million customers YoY to reach a total base of 4.79 million.

On Airtel Business, the company says it accelerated its momentum with 15.2% YoY growth on more account additions and offering a full set of products and solutions. Digital TV had a base of 17.4 million customers. On the digital ecosystem, Bharti Airtel says it has a "robust customer base of over 185 Mn across our key digital assets – Thanks, Xstream and Wynk”.

Ahead of the quarterly earning announcement, Bharti Airtel stock had surged 0.18% to ₹704.95 on the National Stock Exchange.