Bharti Airtel Limited Annual Report-Key Takeaways
18-08-2022

Bharti Airtel Limited Annual Report-Key Takeaways

18-08-2022

Theme: Consumer Obsessed. Future Growth

We aspire to create a compelling experience for our customeracross all services, for this we have given attention to adopt latest technology and create infrastructure that supports and sustains high speed network equipped with innovation and creating teams that understand customer needs. Focused investment in technology, spectrum and infrastructure created superhighway to reach the customers. Our core strength in data, distribution, payment and network has been making significant progress by building strong digital ecosystem which can be seen in terms of revenue contribution. Our digital services Airtel Payment Bank, Wynk music, Airtel ads, Airtel IQ or Nxtra by Airtel have unique position for customers and are now mature to be considered as unicorns in their own right.     

Post 4G network, we have concentrated on cementing 5G sector network. We have already tested and demonstrated the 5G readiness of network for retail and enterprise customers which can use to build new business model of tomorrow. Our customer obsession which has led us to increase ARPU and develop steady revenue stream is backed by clean balance sheet and leaner capital structure.  Timely fundraising, high-cost debt payment and strategic monetisation of assets keep us capitalised for our growth journey. Our focus is on giving our customer Omni-channel, One Airtel is an initiative in that direction.

Steller Business Performance for FY22

Revenue: Rs.1,16,547 Cr (15% YoY Growth)

Operating Profit: Rs.58,110 Cr (25.9% YoY Growth)

Operating Profit margin: 49.8% (vs 45% in FY21)

Customer Base: 49.13 Cr (+4% YoY Growth)

ARPU: Rs. 178 (vs 163 Q3FY22)

Key business segments

                                                                                 FY2022

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INDIA

Mobile Service

Airtel offers postpaid, prepaid, roaming, internet and other value added services. This is the core business activity of the company.  Its distribution channel is spread across 1.13 million outlets with network presence in 7,913 census town and 795,126 non-census town and villages covering 95% of the Indian population. Company offers high speed internet access and host of innovative services like Mobile TV, video calls, live-streaming videos, gaming, and others. It has a Pan India reach with 355,079 RKms of optical fiber. The mobile service has given 14% revenue growth of Rs.63,205 Cr derived from price intervention and 4G customer net addition. EBITDA grew by 141% in FY22.

The company has 20.84 crore data customers as of March 2022, of which 96% were 4G customers. The company had added 20,676 mobile towers and 145,353 mobile broadband in the year. Airtel added 1800, 2100 and 2300 band spectrum will help to address capacity needs due to increasing data consumption resulting improved experience.

Home Services

Airtel provides fixed line telephone and broadband services for homes in 847 cities making Pan India network. The product includes high speed broadband upto 1 Gbps speed and voice connectivity. Airtel home service has generated Rs.3,039 crores in revenue with growth of 30% and EBITDA margin growth of 20%. New launch of ‘Koi Load Nahi’ campaign to promote Airtel Xstream Fiber broadband which connects up to 60 devices. Airtel partnered with Netflix to offer distinguished proposition of premium content on Airtel hi-speed internet plans. Airtel has also launched Airtel Black which provides multiple services and bills under one umbrella.

Digital TV Service

Airtel Direct to Home (DTH) platform offers both standard and HD digital TV services with 3D capability and Dolby surrounded sound. At current Airtel offers 670 channels which include 84 HD channels, 56 SVOD services, 5 international channels and 4 interactive services. Digital TV service has contributed 3153.8 crore in revenue with 3% growth and EBITDA margin growth at 1%.

The Digital TV service has the customer base of 17.6 Lakhs. Digital TV service is present across 639 districts across India. Airtel is pioneer in launching innovative products to its customers. Airtel launched new OTT bundle subscription plan which provide TV programmes and OTT streaming like Diseny+hotstar, Amazon, Xstream Premium etc. Currently the Airtel digital TV has 900,000+ customers. 

Airtel Business

Airtel Business provides ICT service with multiple offerings to enterprise, government, carriers and small & medium business. Airtel provides fixed line voice, data and other connectivity solutions like MLPS, VoIP, SIP trucking. It also offers video conferencing solution. Cloud portfolio offers storage, compute, Microsoft Office 365, ecommerce package, Network integration, data centres, managed services, enterprise mobility applications and digital media. The company strategically located submarines cables and satellites network which enables its customers to connect across the world. Airtel global network runs across 365,000 Rkms+ covering 50 countries and 5 continents. Airtel business generated revenue of 16,070.2 crores with 12% growth in FY23 and EBITDA margin of 14%.

Airtel joined SEA-ME-WE-6 undersea cable consortium to scale up high speed network for India’s emerging digital economy. Airtel is investing 20% in overall cable system which runs from Singapore to France connecting 19200 Rkms SEA-ME-WE-6 and expected to go live in 2025. Airtel has entered into joint venture with Hughes Communication India Pvt. Ltd(HCIPL) which has the combined base of over 200,000 VSAT’s. Airtel and Capgemini have collaborated to bring the experience of 5G solutioning and System Integration (SI) to co-innovate a range of India-focused use cases. Nxtra by Airtel launched 38 MW hyperscale data centre in Chennai which will have footprint in 12 large and 120 edge data centres. Airtel and Oracle have partnered to set up joint cloud centre of excellence in Gurugram from emerging cloud technology and IP development. Airtel is set to launch “Airtel IoT” a 5G ready platform for the world of connecting things.

Africa

Airtel Africa is helping lives of Sub-Saharan Africa by digitalisation, financial infusion and empowering the company. Airtel has acquired 128.4 million customers across 14 countries up from 11.82 crores customers in previous year which represents 8.7% growth in customer base. The Airtel Africa revenue grew by 21.5% generating 35,061.2 crore from 28,863.3 crore. Airtel Africa signed an agreement with Quarter holding LLC regarding the investment of 20 crore USD Airtel Mobile Commerce BV, a subsidiary of Airtel Africa plc.

Future Prospects:

• Airtel made fresh deployments and upgraded infrastructure to provide superior networks across India, in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
• Postpaid continuous to be underpenetrated compared to other emerging countries, reducing the pricing delta between postpaid and prepaid is creating opportunity for the growth in prepaid going forward.
• Airtel has expanded coverage to 847 cities (vs 291 cities in FY21); target to reach 40 million home passes and 2,000 cities by FY 2024-25.
• Airtel has joined SEA-ME-WE-6 undersea cable consortium to scale up high speed network for India’s emerging digital economy which will connect Singapore and France with a range of 19,200 Rkms. It will be a largest undersea cable system globally.
• India’s wireless mobile broadband penetration at ~67% is still low, as customers upgrade from feature phone to smartphones, demand is expected to increase. This provides a large headroom for the company to grow.

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