Bharti Airtel rings a good tune

Bharti Airtel has been ringing a good tone since yesterday – in anticipation of better Q4FY16 numbers. And they were announced much later in the evening and today, the stock has reacted positively. The stock which has closed yesterday at Rs.373.15, jumped up to an intra day high at Rs.384.90 and is now at Rs.380 levels, all along in the green.

The company’s numbers were much better than expected, beating most analyst expectations. It posted a 16% (QoQ) rise in consolidated net profit at Rs.1290 crore and this was on a 4% increase in total income at Rs.24,983 crore. Its EBITDA spurted up by 8% to Rs.9136 crore and margins improved from 35.1% to 36.6%. This good bottomline is despite an exceptional loss of Rs.300 crore in Q4 v/s Rs.340 crore in Q3.

Its consolidated mobile data revenues at Rs 4,434 crore grew by 44% (YoY) while revenue from India rose 12% at Rs.18,328 crore. This was led by strong growth of 12% in Mobile and 23% in Digital TV. Mobile Data revenue rose 44% in India, led by increase in the Data customer base by 25% and traffic by 69%. Mobile Broadband customers increased by 80% to 35.5 million. Data ARPU has moved up by Rs 21 (Y-o-Y) to Rs 196 in Q4’16, led by 31% increase in usage per customer. Mobile Data revenues now contribute to 23.3% of Mobile India revenues vis-à-vis 17.6% in the corresponding quarter last year.

The company ended FY16 with a consolidated total revenue at Rs 96,532 crore, up 7% and net profit was up 6% at Rs.5484 crore.

The market is enthused with its decision to buy back up to Rs.1434 crore worth of shares at price of Rs.400/share.