Bhart Airtel Q2 Earnings: Telco's Net Profit Zooms 89 Per Cent To Rs 2,145 Crore

Bharti Airtel's total revenue rose 22 per cent year on year to Rs 34,527 crore during the just-ended quarter

Bharti Airtel will roll out additional 8,000 towers in the quarter to further strengthen its network coverage, the telco said.

Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest telecom operator, on Monday clocked an 89 per cent year-on-year (YoY) rise in consolidated net profit for second quarter ended September 2022 to Rs 2,145 crore, amid improved average realisation per subscriber. The total revenue rose 22 per cent year on year to Rs 34,527 crore during the just-ended quarter, according to a statement.

Gopal Vittal, CEO, Bharti Airtel, said the company is now rolling out 5G and exuded confidence that Airtel 5G Plus will deliver the best experience in India. "At the same time we remain concerned about the low ROCE (Return on Capital Employed) that our business delivers due to pricing that is the lowest in the world. Given the large investments required to drive digital adoption in India, we believe there is a need for tariff correction," Vittal said, while adding, "We have delivered yet another quarter with competitive revenue growth and improved margins. The consistency of our execution has been driven by the strength and resilience of our portfolio. Our B2B and home businesses continued their strong growth momentum while Mobile ARPU expanded to Rs 190 on the back of premiumisation and deep customer understanding."

Vittal, however, added that he remained concerned about the low Return on Capital Employed that the business delivers due to pricing, which is the lowest in the world. "Given the large investments required to drive digital adoption in India we believe there is a need for tariff correction," he said.

“We rolled out additional 8,000 towers in the quarter to further strengthen our network coverage and provide ubiquitous connectivity. Several initiatives have also been undertaken to improve Network quality – leveraging digital tools/probes to monitor and improve customer experience and scaling up Vo-Wi-Fi adoption to improve indoor experience. We now have over 47 million customers using our Vo-Wi-Fi services,” he added.

Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for the quarter stood at Rs 190 as compared to Rs 153 in Q2 FY22 on the back of the "continued focus on quality customers, feature phone to smartphone upgradation and data monetisation", the Airtel statement said. 

Airtel Business continues its numero uno position with 16.8 per cent YoY revenue growth and widening the gap with its nearest competitor by leveraging the converged portfolio of Airtel and harvesting the rapidly increasing demand for data and connectivity related solutions.

“Our strategy of going both wide to penetrate more accounts as well as deep has led to continuous outperformance and market share expansion,” the statement said.

Revenue of Digital TV remained stable with customer base of 15.8 million at the end of the quarter. DTH business is showing early green shoots of recovery as an outcome of our strategy of simplifying pricing and offering converged propositions to win high value customers. “We have been scaling our digital capabilities to deliver best-in-class experience and offering differentiated digital services to our customers. We have robust customer base of over 190 Mn MAUs across our key digital assets – Thanks, Xstream and Wynk. In our continuous endeavour to deliver additional value proposition to our customers through innovation, we launched Airtel Xsafe – an advanced home surveillance solution which allows customer to keep an eye on loved ones,” the statement added.

There are over 1.2 million retailers transacting and making payments every day on Mitra App. During the quarter, Airtel Payments Bank continued to expand rapidly with a strong total customer base of 151 million and highly engaged Monthly Transacting Users (MTU) base of over 50 million.