Bharti Airtel Q2 earnings: Net profit rises 98%, revenue at Rs 41,473 crore 

Bharti Airtel reported a stellar set of earnings for the quarter ended September 2024 quarter.  Consolidated net profit climbed 98% to Rs 4,153.4 crore in the last quarter against Rs 2093.2 crore in the September 2023 quarter. Revenue rose 12% to Rs 41,473.3 crore in Q2 against Rs 37,043.8 crore revenue in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal.

Consolidated net profit before exceptional items for the second quarter was at Rs 6751.1 crore in Q2.

Consolidated EBITDA in the last quarter rose 12% to Rs 22,021 crore YoY, implying EBITDA margin of 53.1%. 

Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) rose 10.7% YoY to Rs 10,996 crore. However, EBIT margin fell 29 bps YoY at 26.5%. 

Mobile services India revenues rose 18.5% year-on-year, led by tariff repair, strong smartphone data customer additions and underlying mix improvement. 

Revenue of Airtel Business climbed 10.7% year-on-year, boosted by growth in domestic portfolio.

As on September 30, 2024, the Company had 563 million customers, an increase of 4.3% compared to 540 Mn in the corresponding quarter last year. The company had 351.6 mn mobile services customers as on September 30, 2024, compared to 342.3 million in the corresponding quarter last year, an increase of 2.7% YoY.  

Gopal Vittal, MD at Airtel said, “We delivered another quarter of solid performance, with India revenue growing 8.7% sequentially. Africa maintained strong revenue growth momentum as well with 7.7% constant currency growth. The flow thru of tariff repair is in-line with our expectation on ARPU increase and SIM consolidation. We reported industry leading ARPU of Rs 233. Our focus on winning quality customers and driving premiumization has helped us add 4.2 Mn smartphone customers. We continue to expand our Wifi coverage with FWA offerings to over 2,000 cities. We continue to invest in our digital businesses to diversify portfolio strength and drive long term growth. Airtel also continues to invest in a future ready digital network to deliver brilliant customer experience - we launched India's first AI-powered, network-based spam detection solution to solve the endemic problem of spam calls and messages. Our 5G network has once again received validation from Open signal – Airtel was awarded all the five awards on 5G network experience."

The earnings were announced after market hours on Monday. Bharti Airtel stock ended 0.05% lower at Rs 1663.65 on BSE. Market cap of the telco stood at Rs 9.47 lakh crore.