Bharti Airtel Ltd (Airtel), on May 17, reported a 165 percent growth in consolidated net profit of Rs 2,008 crore in the fourth quarter of FY2021-22 as against Rs 759 crore recorded a year ago partially aided by a higher exceptional item of Rs 906 crore. On a sequential basis, the profit has inched up 142 percent from Rs 830 crore earned during the October–December period.
Consolidated revenues for the second largest telecom company by subscriber base in India rose 22 percent on-year to Rs 31,500 crore as compared to a revenue of Rs 25,747 crore registered in the year-ago quarter. On a sequential basis, the revenue is higher 5.5 percent from the revenue of Rs 29,867 crore recorded in the previous quarter.
“This has been another quarter to cap a full year of consistent and competitive performance across our portfolio underscoring our focus on all round delivery”, said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia. “Our strong balance sheet and cash flows have enabled us to further repay some of our spectrum liabilities ahead of schedule and improve our leverage”.
He added further that, “We continue to remain optimistic about the opportunities in the coming years and believe we are well poised as a company for three reasons – first, our ability to execute consistently to a simple strategy of winning with quality customers and delivering the best experience to them; second, our future proofed business model with massive investments in both infrastructure and digital capabilities; finally, our financial prudence backed by our strong governance focus”.
The India business generated revenues of Rs 22,500 crore during the quarter, registering a YoY growth of 22.27 percent while the revenue for its Africa business in constant currency was up 19.1 percent YoY.
EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) margin for India business inched higher by 191 bps YoY to 50.8 percent. The company was also able to improve upon its EBITDA margins for its Africa business by 187 bps YoY to 49.6 percent.
India EBIT margin at 34.2 percent was up 368 bps YoY at 18.8 percent while EBIT margin in Africa improved 349 bps YoY to 34.2 percent.
Its customer base in India increased by 1 percent sequentially and 2.7 percent on year to 360 million. The company managed to increase its subscriber base in Africa by 2 percent on quarter and a robust 8.7 percent year on year.
The company added 21.5 Mn 4G customers to its network over last year, an increase by 12 percent YoY. ARPU (average revenue per user) continues to be the best in industry, average data usage per data customer at 18.8 GBs/month and voice usage per customer at 1,083 mins /month.
During the quarter, the company spent Rs 4,277 crore on capex in its India business and a capex of Rs 1,682 crore was incurred in Africa.
The strong growth in the bottomline of the company came from the resilient topline performance as the growth in consolidated net sales was aided by the tariff hikes undertaken by the sector in the past two quarters and which are expected to fully reflect in the March quarter. The bottomline also got a boost from the strong growth in ARPU (average revenue per user) for the company.
For the full-year period from April–March 2022, the consolidated PAT has jumped to Rs 4,255 crore from the loss of Rs 15,083 crore achieved during FY21.
Consolidated revenues for FY22 jumped 16 percent to Rs 1,16,547 crore from the revenues of Rs 1,00,616 crore for last year.
The company has recommended a dividend of Rs 3 per fully paid-up equity share of face value Rs 5 each and Rs 0.75 per partly paid-up equity share of face value Rs 5 each for the financial year 2021-22. The dividend is in proportion to the amount paid-up on each equity share of face value Rs 5 each.
Bharti Airtel stock ended Rs 13.85 higher at Rs 707.0 on May 17 at the National Stock Exchange. The stock has gained 31 percent during the past one year but is down 5 percent over the past one month.
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