Bharti Airtel Q3 profit surges 121% to ₹5,514 crore; MD bats for 'further tariff repair'

Telecom giant Bharti Airtel reported a 121% year-on-year rise in net profit (before exceptional items) to ₹5,514 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2024. The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led telecom major’s revenue rose 19% year-on-year to ₹45,129 crore, driven by strong momentum in India business, sustained constant currency growth in Africa and Indus Tower’s consolidation.

Bharti Airtel’s India business clocked quarterly revenues of ₹34,654 crore, up 24.6% year-on-year, backed by residual impact of “tariff repair” in the mobile segment, its focus to premiumise the portfolio with “quality customers” and strong momentum in Homes business and impact of Indus Towers consolidation, the company says.

Average revenue per user (ARPU) for the quarter stood at ₹245 as compared to ₹208 in Q3 FY24.

Gopal Vittal, vice-chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel, says the industry needs “further tariff repair” to ensure sustained investments and long-term value creation.

Consolidated operating profit or EBITDA stood at ₹24,880 crore with EBITDA margin of 55.1%. India business EBIT came in at ₹9,961 crore; EBIT margin at 28.7%, increase of 5.3% year-on-year.

Mobile services revenues in India rose 21.4%, led by tariff repair, strong smartphone customer additions and underlying mix improvement, the telco says. Homes business maintained its growth momentum with revenues up 18.7%, driven by strong customer additions. Net customer additions reached new highs of 674,000 in Q3 FY25.

“We further strengthened our leadership position in post-paid segment with sustained momentum in net adds of 0.6 Mn in Q3’25 thereby reaching a customer base of 25.3 Mn. Our market share in smartphone segment saw continued improvement with addition of 25.2 Mn, increase of 10.3% YoY,” it says.

The company’s says its anti-SPAM tool has brought significant relief, notifying close to 252 million unique customers and “effectively combating the SPAM menace.” Airtel says its new tool identifies over 1 million unique spammers, making more than 130 million calls daily.

Airtel Business delivered revenue growth of 8.7% year-on-year despite of headwinds in the global segment primarily arising out of pressures on wholesale data and messaging.

“Indus Towers consolidation is effective this quarter. India revenue (excluding Indus) grew by 4.8% sequentially. Africa maintained strong constant currency sequential growth trajectory of 5.6%. India mobile delivered strong performance led by residual flow-through of tariff repair and underlying levers of premiumisation,” says Vittal.

“We are in the middle of comprehensive re-tooling of our Airtel Business portfolio by stepping-up investments in digital services across Cloud, Security and IoT while shedding very low margin commodity voice and wholesale business. This is likely to impact the top line of this business in the coming quarters but will have an insignificant impact on the margins,” Vittal adds.