Reliance Jio vs Bharti Airtel vs Vodafone Idea: Check which telco subscribers went to most and lockdown losses

Motilal Oswal highlights that the Telecom industry added 3.4 mn gross subscribers in Nov’20 to reach a subscriber base of 1.15 bn (v/s just 3.2 mn adds in Oct’20). Continuing the trend, Bharti Airtel has added higher gross and 4G subscribers vs Reliance Jio in the past four months. An increase in the gross subscriber base for Bharti Airtel /Reliance Jio stood at 4.4 mn / 1.9 mn in Nov’20 (v/s 3.7mn / 2.2 mn adds in Oct’20). Vodafone Idea, on the other hand, lost 2.9 mn subscribers in Nov’20 (loss of 29 mn gross subscribers since April’20).

The industry has cumulatively lost 5.5 mn gross subscribers since the implementation of the nationwide lockdown in Mar '20. The active subscriber base saw a sharp increase of 7.5 mn to 968 mn in Nov’20 – the highest in 13 months – after adding 2.5 mn subscribers in Oct’20 (still 21 mn below the peak since March’20). This was largely attributable to the uptick seen in economic activity. However, Bharti Airtel continued to report strong active subscriber adds with 3.9m, and Reliance Jio added a modest 5.4 mn subscribers in Nov '20.

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Bharti Airtel adds strong active subscribers, but slips to second spot:

Bharti Airtel continued the momentum with a strong 3.9 mn active subscriber adds (v/s 3 mn adds in Oct’20), reaching 323 mn subscribers in Nov’20. With this, Bharti Airtel slipped from its top position to having 33.4% share (+10bps MoM) in active SMS. Overall, Bharti Airtel has added a total of 8.1 mn active subscribers since Mar’20.
Bharti Airtel has added 4.4 mn gross subscribers (v/s 3.7 mn additions in Oct’20 and 6.8 mn cumulative adds since Mar’20) to reach 335m. The quality of Bharti Airtel’s subscribers is reflected in its strong MBB subscriber adds of 4.2 mn (v/s RJio’s adds of 1.9 mn) – it accounts for 64% incremental subscriber market share.

Reliance Jio regains top spot in active SMS:

Reliance Jio added 1.9 mn gross subscribers (v/s 2.2 mn added in Oct’20), reaching 408 mn in Nov’20. Subsequently, gross SMS stood at 35.3% (flat MoM); it continues to retain the top spot with 35.3% market share. Reliance Jio’s monthly gross/MBB subscriber add have slowed to a run-rate of 2 mn over the past four months, with 1.9 mn adds in Nov '20 (v/s an average 7 mn in the last fiscal). However, active subscriber adds were much stronger than gross subscribers at 5.4 mn (after gaining 1.1m in Oct’20) – they reached 325 mn in Nov’20. With this, Reliance Jio gained the top spot with 33.5% share in active SMS (marginally leading Bharti Airtel by 10 bps).