Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator, is soon going to come out with financial and performance results for Q3 FY22. The telco’s average revenue per user (ARPU) is surely going to see a boost due to the prepaid tariff hikes implemented during the quarter. Further, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report suggests that Airtel added new users in November 2021 and the same is expected for the month of December as even Vodafone Idea (Vi) went for tariff hikes which resulted in the subscriber churn rate increasing for the telco. Vi customers either ported out to Jio or Airtel. But at the same time, Airtel results should show a significant drop in revenues quarter-on-quarter (QoQ). This is because of the one-time spectrum sale which took place in the September quarter to Jio, which aided the overall revenues. No such gain was there in the December quarter.
Mobil Business Revenues Expected to Grow
The mobile business revenues of the telco should grow on the back of the prepaid tariff hikes. This would also help with increasing the ARPU for Airtel, which is already the highest in the industry. The full effect of prepaid tariff hikes will only be evident in Q4 FY22. The last quarter of FY22 would determine the pattern in which Airtel’s customers are leaving or joining the network (most probably, it should be the latter). Along with this, the broadband business of the company is expected to grow as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is losing its fixed-line market share to private operators. Bharti Airtel’s bundled service - Airtel Black is something that is worth watching out for. The telco has purposed the service in a way that would help with adding more customers to its ecosystem, retaining the old ones, and earning more out of each of them. The capex of the telco should also increase as, during the last quarter of the year, the economy had opened up a little.
