Bharti Airtel Q4FY19 results today: All eyes on ARPU, Africa biz, subscriber base

The share price of telecom service provider Bharti Airtel surged a by 1% on Dalal Street today, ahead of company's Q$F19 result. At around 1203 hours, Airtel shares were trading at Rs 333.05 per piece up by 0.59% on Sensex, after touching an intraday high of Rs 336 per piece. Airtel's rival Reliance Jio had posted a whopping 64.7% jump in net profit to Rs 840 crore versus a year ago same period. RJio's subscriber base stood at 306.7 million with ARPU of Rs 126.2 per subscriber per month as on March 2019. When Airtel announces its result, all eyes would be on net profit, ARPU, subscribers and key developments. 

Talking about Airtel's Q3FY19, Motilal Oswal said, "We expect consolidated revenue to grow 1% QoQ/6% YoY to INR208b, and consolidated EBITDA to grow 1% QoQ to INR63b. This will mainly be led by a revival of India wireless business and an uptick in Africa business. India wireless revenue is likely to grow 1.5% QoQ to INR103.4b, as the benefits of APRU uptick (from roll-out of minimum recharge plans) will outweigh the decline in subscribers. India wireless EBITDA too is expected to grow 1% QoQ to INR19.6b."

Motilal Oswal also expects India's APRU to grow 15% QoQ to INR119 and subscriber base to drop 8% QoQ. Further, Motilal said, "Africa revenue/EBITDA is expected to grow 3%/4% QoQ to INR60.9b/INR22.5b.We expect Bharti to report net loss of INR7.2b."

On the other hand, Edelweiss Securities said, "We estimate Bharti's India mobile business revenues to improve by 1.5% QoQ on account of full impact of
minimum ARPU plans for low-end customers. We believe that weeding of bulk of the subscriber base is behind and we will see meagre 3.5mn subscriber decline in this quarter (48.5mn in Q3FY19). Full impact of subscriber rationalisation will also result in sharp jump in ARPU (INR120 versus INR104 for Q3FY19). Africa business is expected to remain flat QoQ."

"Consolidated EBITDA margin expected to marginally improve by 60bps QoQ on account of higher revenue from India business and lower energy cost in India business. Capex guidance for FY20, mobile broadband subscriber addition, timeline for rights issue and Africa IPO, and other balance sheet deleveraging plans will be the key things to watch," added Edelweiss. 

During Q3FY19, Airtel's profit plunged by a massive 71.81% to Rs 86.20 crore compared to Rs 305.80 crore a year ago same period. Mobile Data traffic surged however by 182.8% to 3,332 billion MBs, whereas the ARPU came in at Rs 104.