Bharti Airtel’ shares were trading about a percent higher on Friday (August 4), a day after the telecom firm reported its financial results for the April to June 2023 quarter. While the net profit of Rs 1,612.5 for the first quarter of the fiscal was flat, its average revenue per user (ARPU) for the quarter rose to Rs 200 as compared to Rs 183 in the June ended quarter of last fiscal.

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This was on the back of sustained focus on acquiring quality customers and improved realisations on account of premiumisation, Bharti Airtel said.

Following the earnings, Morgan Stanley said better than expected ARPU was driving the beat in India earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA). CLSA also highlighted leading ARPU and Motilal Oswal attributed the increase to 4G-led mix improvement, tariff hike in minimum recharge plans, and higher number of days in the June ended quarter.

Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, points out that the subscriber additions in the first quarter were better than projection on the back of good postpaid additions. CLSA highlighted the growth in home broadband and Airtel enterprise businesses and also said that the telco saw the highest ever postpaid subscriber gains at eight lakh customers.

Airtel added 5.6 million 4G subscribers from April to June, taking its total 4G customer count to 229.7 million, which is 2.5 percent higher than in January to March. These subscribers account for 70.4 percent of all its subscribers, up from 65.2 percent a year ago.

This comes at a time when Airtel, market leader Reliance Jio and other telcos have a dual focus of migrating more customers from 2G to 4G and subsequently to 5G to grow their premium user base and of raising tariffs that have long been stagnant.

Airtel Digital TV consolidated over one crore customers at the end of the quarter on the back of market-specific strategy and simplified pricing along with its convergence portfolio.

"We have been scaling our digital capabilities to deliver best-in-class experience and offering differentiated digital services to our customers. We have a robust customer base of more than 200 million monthly active users across our key digital assets – Thanks, Xstream and Wynk," the company said.

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