Bharti Airtel Q4 Results: Profit Beats Estimates, Revenue Rises On Higher ARPU, Customer Addition

Bharti Airtel Ltd.'s fourth-quarter profit more than doubled beating estimates as revenue rose, aided by tariff hikes and 4G customer acquisitions.

Net profit of the telecom operator rose 142% sequentially to Rs 2,007.8 crore, according to its exchange filing. That compares with Rs 1,785 crore consensus estimate of profit by analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

Bharti Airtel Q4 Highlights (Consolidated, QoQ)

• Revenue increased 5.47% to Rs 31,500 crore against an estimate of Rs 31,795 crore

• Operating profit increased 9% to Rs 16,040 crore. The forecast was Rs 16,153.1 crore

• Ebitda margin widened to 50.92% from 49.23% as of December.

The average revenue per user of the telecom services provider stood at Rs 178, 9.2% higher sequentially, aided by the November tariff hikes.

Meanwhile, the customer base increased to 49.1 crore as on March 31 from 35.6 crore in December.

The telecom carrier added 52 lakh 4G customers in the January- March period and 2.15 crore during the fiscal.

The average data usage per data customer stood at 18.8 gigabytes a month and voice usage per customer at 1,083 minutes a month, according to the press release accompanying the results.

Total capex spend for the quarter stood at Rs 5,997 crore.

Airtel Africa reported revenue and profit after tax of $1.22 billion (Rs 9,187.1 crore) and $187 million (Rs 1,406.5 crore) in the quarter ended March. Africa revenue was supported by growth across 14 countries and across services—voice, data, and mobile money business.

Shares of Bharti Airtel closed 2% higher before the results were announced compared with a 2.63% gain in the benchmark Nifty 50.