Bharti Airtel Posts Q3 Results: Made the Most Money, Had the Best ARPU

Bharti Airtel announced its quarterly results for the quarter ending December 31, 2021. The telco registered sequential growth in revenue as the profits shrank slightly. Notably, the telco became the last one to announce results, as Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea announced their quarterly results on 21st January.

Bharti Airtel Posts Solid Q3FY22 Results

As per Airtel's KPI document, the telco saw its revenue rise from ₹28,326.4 crores in Q2FY22 to ₹29,866.6 crores in the current quarter. That means that the telco achieved the most revenue among the three private players across the third quarter; Jio's quarterly revenue stood at ₹24,176 crores, and Vi's stood at ₹9,406.4 crores. Along with this, Airtel saw its EBITDA rise to ₹14,904.7 crores, up from ₹14,017.7 crores, a rise of 7% sequentially. The EBITDA margin also improved slightly from Q2 to Q3, going from 49.48% to 49.9%.

The Net Debt-EBITDA ratio (annualized) and including the impact of leases as of December 31, 2021, was at 2.67 times, as compared to 3.03 times last year. What's more, the telco paid ₹15,519 crores to the DoT to clear all deferred spectrum liabilities before 2014, thereby flexing its financial muscles. It will also give the telco some headroom as it will reduce the overall interest the telco has to pay. Reflecting on its financial health, Airtel reported a cash reserve of ₹7,301.5 crores, up from ₹6,170.7 crores in Q2.

Airtel has been leading the telecom sector in terms of ARPU and the last quarter saw it extend its lead; the ARPU reached ₹163, a ₹10 increase from the quarter before, and ₹12 more than its closest competitor, Jio. Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Bharti Airtel Limited, said, "we have delivered another quarter of sustained performance across all our business segments". He noted the growth in key financial metrics and pointed out that the impact of the tariff hikes had been reflected, to some extent. Vittal, however, said that tariff hikes will give proper dividends by the 4th quarter.

Putting Up A Fight, Veteran Style

At the end of the quarter, Airtel had 322 million subscribers, registering a slight decline of 0.559 million users sequentially. However, the telco managed to add 29 million 4G customers to its user base, the largest addition in the industry. The new additions took Airtel's 4G user base to over 195 million. Along with this, Bharti Airtel also reported strong voice & data usage numbers, with average data used per user per month coming out at 18.3 GB/user/month. This puts Airtel second in the metric, behind Jio.

Airtel managed to roll out around 7.8k new towers, and around 31,000 new mobile broadband base stations. The overall Capex for the telco remained at ₹4,654 crores, reflecting Airtel's intent to stay competitive. Airtel also inked a deal with Google, that will see Google acquire a 1.28% stake for $700 million. What's more, Google will invest another $300 million under various commercial agreements.

The telco also reported good numbers on its enterprise arm, Airtel Business. Airtel Business registered 13.4% YoY growth, driven by demand for data, connectivity-related solutions, and CPaaS. Furthermore, Airtel noted that Nxtra by Airtel launched its third large data center in Chennai. That makes Nxtra the largest network of data centers in India; it owns 11 hyperscale and 120 edge data centers.

Gopal Vittal added, "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 marketplace, Nxtra, and digital banking positions us well to build an Airtel of the future".