Bharti Airtel plans to raise $1 billion in fresh capital

Indian telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd said on Tuesday it will raise $1 billion in debt, after it reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue on higher tariff rates.

Airtel said https://bit.ly/3oAZmLt it would raise the amount, 75 billion rupees ($1 billion), by issuing non-convertible debt securities, including debentures and bonds, but did not reveal how it would use the money.

Engaged in a fierce price war that started since the entry of billionaire Mukesh Ambani`s Reliance Jio into the Indian telecom sector in 2016, Airtel has been raising capital for development of its products and services to lure more customers.
 

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Last month, Alphabet Inc`s Google said it will invest up to $1 billion in Airtel to help with the development of its devices, home broadband, data centres, cloud adoption and 5G networks.

India`s telecom sector has been benefiting from increased data usage as more people take to remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mobile data consumption for Airtel, India`s second-largest telecom company by subscriber base, rose 33.8% in the third quarter from a year earlier.

The company in November https://bit.ly/3gJLTgh increased tariffs on prepaid plans, as did rivals Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea, reiterating that the industry`s average revenue per user (ARPU)— a key performance indicator in the telecoms industry — needs to go as high as 300 rupees for a financially healthy business model.

Third-quarter ARPU for Airtel rose 11.6% to 163 rupees, ahead of Jio`s 151.6 rupees.

Airtel`s subscriber base in India grew to about 356 million, adding 3 million 4G subscribers during the last three months of 2021 to reach 195.5 million.

Consolidated revenue from operations climbed 12.6% to 298.67 billion rupees ($4 billion) compared with estimates of 291.97 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Consolidated net profit fell 2.8% to 8.30 billion rupees.