Bharti Airtel Stock Analysis| Q2FY21 Results Analysis

Bharti Airtel Q2FY21 Results Analysis

Introduction

Sunil Mittal owned Bharti Airtel reported its Q2FY21 results recently. Stock also showed a decent rally in this week after going through a sluggish period. Let us discuss the reasons behind the recent stock price rally in Bharti Airtel as well let us analyze latest quarterly results in this blog.

Bharti Airtel Q2FY21 Results Analysis

Let us understand the reasons behind the recent rally in stock price.

1. Foreign Ownership Limit going down to 49% and nod to raise Foreign Investment Limit to 100%

• Airtel got permission to raise Foreign Investment Limit to 100%. This would provide Foreign Institutional Investors an opportunity to increase their investments in Airtel.
• This ultimately might result in Airtel’s weight going up in world indices like MSCI India Index from 1.8% to 5.4%,

2. Decent Q2FY21 Results

Increasing Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)

• Company is able to consistently increase its ARPU over the last few quarters.

Consolidated Q2FY21 Results

• Company has recorded robust growth in revenue and EBITDA, resulting in strong EBITDA margins.
• This has resulted in strong operating efficiency with EBIT margin at 17.1%.
• Company has reported losses in PBT for previous quarters, however for Q2FY21, company has reported a profit of 518 crores.
• However, due to tax related adjustments, company has reported net loss in this quarter.
• These results show that company is again retracting its way back to its profitability.
• Company has made enough provisions for AGR dues and has also raised capital for same. Looks like company is well placed to grow at a healthy rate in upcoming quarters.

Steady Increase in Revenues and EBITDA Margin

• Company is increasing its revenue and EBITDA margins consistently over the last few quarters.
• In last 2 quarters, company was able to expand its margins without significant tariff hikes and mainly on the basis of operational efficiencies.

Increasing Capital Expenditure

• Company is taking extensive capital expenditure which has increased by 79% YoY, in line with declining operating cashflow.
• As seen the number of towers has increased to 2.28 lakh towers, which is mainly needed as subscriber base is increasing.

Healthy growth in India Business

• Company has reported healthy results for its India business with its revenue and operating profits increasing on YoY and QoQ basis.
• Company’s capex has increased ~2x which has resulted in free cashflow declining by 16% YoY.

Revenue and EBITDA mix

• Company’s B2C services contribute 75% to the overall revenue mix and remaining is contributed by B2B services.
• As seen, mobile services has highest revenue and EBITDA contribution, while Digital TV services have highest EBITDA margins.

Customer Base

• Company has majority of its subscriber base in India and has shown overall decent growth in subscribers on YoY and QoQ basis.

3. Key Operating metrics

Subscriber Base

• Company is increasing its subscriber base every quarter except for June’20 quarter.
• Company’s prepaid subscriber base is ~94% of total subscriber base.

Voice on Network

• As seen, company has increased its voice as well as data customer base consistently over the last few quarters.
• With new work from home culture, data and voice usage of customers is expected to rise.
• Currently per capita data consumption is at healthy levels of 16.41 and has seen rise from Mar’20 quarter mainly due to lockdown induced work from home.

Conclusion

Thus, company is phenomenal in increasing its revenue, operating efficiency due to robust increase in average revenue per user. Company has also taken extensive capital expenditure which is expected to convert into healthy revenues going forward. Thus, it seems the company is well placed to tap on the robust growth in telecom sector and hence should be on investor’s watchlist.