What to expect from Airtel Q3 results today

The bigger picture on Reliance Jio’s full impact of attractive deals in the whole quarter from October to December will be unveiled on Tuesday with telecom major – Bharti Airtel’s third quarter results.

However, industry experts are expecting Airtel’s subscriber base to grow but average revenue per user (ARPU) to decline year-on-year.

“Bharti to see 8.1% YoY (+1.2% QoQ) growth in its subscriber -base in India, but a sharp 9.6% YoY drop (down 7.6% QoQ) in ARPU to Rs 174,” Sanjesh Jain, research analyst from ICICI Securities said in a report dated January 4.

In December, incumbents put up a fight against RJio’s offers and propagated counter offers to safeguard their customer base; however, since customers can’t shy away from a good bargain, Jain added, “…considerable voice/data traffic is likely to move on to RJio as subscribers are using RJio as second SIM.”

In an earlier report by Zeebiz we had questioned whether telecoms attractive deals on data packs improve its Q3 financials.

Airtel had launched offers which included free calls and limited mobile Internet use priced at Rs 150-Rs 350 with 28 days validity, in its attempt to match the free 4G service from Reliance Jio.

Religare analysts, Rumit Dugar and Saumya Shrivastava, in a report dated January 3 estimated that Bharti may report 5.8% YoY growth in wireless revenues for Q3FY17.

“EBITDA (earnings before income tax deduction and amortisation) to grow 1.3% YoY (down 9.5% QoQ) to Rs 86 billion (Rs 8,600 crore) led by Bharti India’s EBITDA growth of 1.7% YoY (down 11% QoQ) to Rs73 billion (Rs 7,300 crore),” Jain said.

Considering that RJio is yet to monetise its usage, Jain said, “…the incumbents are likely to fight for RJio’s incremental paid traffic share, which has hitherto been going for free.”