Bharti Airtel Q3 profit jumps 92%; ARPU at ₹193

Net profit of Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest telecom operator, rose 91.5% year-on-year to ₹1,588 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2022. The telco had reported a profit of ₹830 crore in Q3 FY22.

The company posted quarterly revenues of ₹35,804 crore for the third quarter, up 19.9% year-on-year compared with ₹29,867 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal, according to its stock exchange filing.

Average revenue per user (ARPU) for the quarter stood at ₹193 as compared to ₹163 in Q3 FY22 on the back of Bharti Airtel's continued focus on premiumisation, the filing says.

Consolidated EBITDA or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation grew 24.8% to ₹18,601 crore in Q3. EBITDA margin for the quarter was at 52% as against 49.9% in the corresponding quarter last year.

"EBITDA margins across businesses remained healthy, with India mobile services EBITDA improving from 49.3% in Q3’22 to 53.8% in Q3’23," the filing says.

India revenues for the December quarter increased 19.4% to ₹24,962 crore. Mobile revenues grew by 20.8% on account of improved realisation as well as strong 4G customer additions during the year.

"We have delivered another quarter of consistent and competitive growth across all our businesses. Revenue grew sequentially by 3.7%, while EBITDA margin expanded to 52.0%. Our strategy of winning quality customers has helped us add 6.4 Mn 4G customers and exit the quarter with an industry leading ARPU of Rs 193," says Gopal Vittal, MD, Bharti Airtel.

Airtel Business revenues rose 16.4%, backed by robust demand for data and connectivity related solutions, the company says.

Airtel's Homes business continued its growth momentum with 29.8% jump in revenue led by strong customer additions. The company added 432,000 customers during the quarter to reach to a total base of 5.6 million. The telco continues to accelerate the rollout of Home business on the back of its asset-light local cable operator partnership model, which is now live in 1,140 cities.

Consolidated mobile data traffic rose 23.7% in the quarter to 13,625 petabytes (PBs). The company added 21.2 million 4G data customers to its network over last year, an increase of 10.8%. Average data usage per data customer stood at 20.3GBs/month.

Digital TV business added 2,14,000 customers, the highest in last eight quarters.

"Postpaid, Enterprise, Homes as well as our Africa business sustained their momentum while the DTH business showed signs of growth in an industry that continues to be under pressure," Vittal says, adding that Airtel 5G rollout is on track to cover all towns and key rural areas by March 2024.