Bharti Airtel said its consolidated revenues grew 15.4 percent to Rs 23,939 crore in the first quarter ended June 30, 2020. Airtel India has lowered its Capex by 20 percent during the quarter.
Airtel’s consolidated mobile data traffic registered a growth of 73.5 percent to 7,019 PBs in the first of quarter fiscal 2021.

Airtel India

Airtel India revenues increased 14.6 percent to Rs 17,589 crore. Airtel India’s mobile service revenues rose 18.5 percent. Airtel India’s ARPU reached Rs 157 as compared to Rs 129 in Q1 2020 led by full impact of tariff hikes in the previous quarter alongside continuing focus on quality customers.

Airtel India’s 4G data customers have increased by 45.3 percent to 138.3 million from 95.2 million in the same quarter last year.

Airtel India’s traffic has increased to 74.09 PB per day vs 42.90 PB per day in the same quarter last year.

Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, said: “Data traffic growth surged by ~73 percent even as 4G net additions slowed down to 2 million caused by supply chain shocks in the device eco system.”

Airtel Business revenue rose 9.2 percent led by growth across all its segments – connectivity revenues from global business, domestic enterprise business besides solutions such as data centres, cloud, IOT.

Digital TV revenue grew 9.3 percent, on the back of strong customer additions growth of 5.1 percent to 16.8 million from 16 million. The rollout of the new tariff order also helped Airtel in improving its market share and revenue growth.

Homes business segment, which focuses on broadband, grew 1.4 percent. Customer base of Homes business increased 4.5 percent. Airtel India growth was impacted during the quarter on account of closure of several commercial establishments owing to Covid-19. It made investment in this segment with all new roll-outs fully being on fibre.

EBITDA increased 25.3 percent to Rs 10,639 crore, resulting into an improvement in EBITDA margin by 3.5 p.p. to 44.4 percent.

Airtel reported consolidated net loss before exceptional items of Rs 436 crore. The net loss after exceptional items for the quarter stands at Rs 15,933 crore.

Capex

Airtel India’s Capex fell 20 percent to Rs 34,415 million from Rs 43,223 million. Airtel India’s Capex in mobile business touched Rs 25,585 million, primarily to enhance its indoor coverage, voice quality and data capacities.

Airtel India had 196,145 network towers as compared to 182,600 network towers in the same quarter last year. Out of the total number of towers, 194,205 are mobile broadband towers. The company has total 506,957 mobile broadband base stations as compared to 443,804 mobile broadband base stations at the end of the corresponding quarter last year and 503,883 at the end of the previous quarter.

The total capital expenditure of Bharti Airtel for the quarter was Rs 39,753 million against Rs 50,468 million in the corresponding quarter last year and Rs 113,385 million in the previous quarter.

Bharti Airtel’s total Opex — excluding access costs, costs of goods sold and license fees – rose 5.8 percent to Rs 81,857 million for the quarter ending June 30, 2020.

Airtel India decreased customer churn at 2.2 percent compared to 2.6 percent in same quarter last year. The company had 279.9 million customers as on June 30 2020, compared to 276.8 million in the same quarter last year.

Data traffic grew 72.7 percent to 7,240 billion MBs as compared to 4,192 billion MBs in the same quarter last year. Mobile data usage per customer increased 39.6 percent to 16.3 GBs as compared to 11.7 GBs.