04 November 2022

Bharti Airtel has reported profit and revenue gains in its fiscal second quarter of 2023 (ending 30 September), driven by ARPU growth in its India operations as it added post-paid and data users.

Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO for India and South Asia, noted that the operator was bullish on the prospects for 5G to deliver innovation to the nation, but remains concerned about a low return on capital employed the 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,” said Vittal. Nevertheless, he said that Bharti Airtel “delivered yet another quarter with competitive revenue growth and improved margins.”

Domestic mobile service revenue was up 24.8% year-on-year to INR189.6 billion, led by continued 4G subscriber growth and ARPU which was 23.7% higher at INR190. Mobile subscribers grew by 4.3 million to 327.8 million, with LTE users growing 9.2% to 210.3 million. Average monthly data usage increased 8.9% to 20.8GB. Bharti Airtel deployed nearly 70,000 LTE base stations in the year to end-September for a total of 787,500.