Trends continued to benefit from last July’s tariff hike with sustained margin expansion across all three operators. Capex intensity is expected to moderate further for Bharti as network build decelerates, whereas VIL would accelerate its spending on the back of its 5G launch in March. India’s FWA development remains promising, with potential positive implications on EM Telcos
Indian FWA net adds continue to accelerate and reached roughly c. 2.1m in the December quarter. India is probably therefore now accounting for around 50% of global shipments. We continue to think this is a critical development, and likely to drive an S-curve of adoption in Global EM.
Indian press is reporting that the Indian government is planning to cut AGR liabilities for the industry by around INR 1 trn (c. $12bn), by cutting 50% of interest and 100% of penalties and interest on penalties relating to the AGR fines. Implication would be a c. INR 520bn (US$ 6.2bn) reduction in liabilities for Vodafone IDEA and around INR 380bn (US $4.5bn) for Bharti.
India’s Union Cabinet has approved the waiver of the bank guarantees related to spectrum acquired by the operators before 2022. Vodafone Idea was the key beneficiary of this news as it owed INR 247bn versus Bharti (INR 30bn) and Jio (INR 40bn). As a result, VIL shares rose sharply today. Our brief thoughts below.
Indian mobile revenue rose steadily despite slowing this quarter due to softer ARPU trend. Both Bharti and Jio continue to take share from Vodafone Idea again. Mobile EBITDA kept ahead of topline with all three seeing YoY improvements in margin. Overall, Bharti remained ahead on both metrics.
Bharti Enterprise's investment arm, Bharti Global, has sought to acquire 24.5% stake in BT from Altice UK. Although Bharti Airtel is separately owned by Bharti Enterprise (through Bharti Telecom), we share our thoughts on why we perceive this to be a likely overhang on Bharti Airtel.
India's spectrum auction concluded yesterday with 141.4 MHz of airwaves being sold across the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2500 MHz band for INR 113 bn (US$ 1.36bn). Our proprietary spectrum analytics tool (SpectrumHub) suggests that prices paid were largely in line with the reserve prices, and close to our original expectations.
India’s telecom industry continue to grow in the HSD, with Bharti and Jio improving at the expense of VIL. Industry ARPU tracked MSD again even without any meaningful tariff hikes; we expect increases to be put through in 2H CY24 though that has largely been priced in. EBITDA continue to trend ahead of topline, with YoY margins improvement across the board. Earlier last month, the government also approved the auction for 10,523 MHz of spectrum which starts from INR 963bn (USD 11.6bn). However, w...
Following a very strong H2 2023, Bharti has retraced nearly INR 100/share. We remain bullish and would see the sell-down as a buying opportunity. Consensus forecasts continue to look too low to us; in this note we focus on the consumer margin, which we think is likely to surprise to the upside.
Excluding the Naira devaluation impact, Bharti Airtel reported in-line results for its Indian businesses, with sustained margin expansion again. Indian mobile performance remained strong, with ARPU and revenue growth ahead of peers ahead. Trends also remained strong for Home Services, with Digital TV seeing a nice acceleration post the inflection last quarter.
This is the 3rd in a series of notes looking at FWA (see HERE and HERE). Like us, the market appears to be getting more bullish on FWA in EM, and a series of events such as Jio’s launch suggest FWA could be a significant use case for 5G in Emerging Markets.
India’s telecom industry continue to grow in the HSD, with Bharti outperforming on mobile service revenue growth on a YoY basis again. Whilst Jio posted better net additions, its ARPU trend was softer. Bharti’s Enterprise business did slow down however, largely a function of the deferred spending by global OTT players driven by current global macro.
EM Telcos top line growth slowed somewhat in Q2 again driven by a slower quarter in China. However, other markets stayed strong and simple average revenue growth was 8.5%. Our thesis remains that EM telcos are set to grow sustainably at GDP+ rates, as they have been now for 3 years. With the rates cycle seemingly peaking, macro headwinds may also start to improve, and we continue to believe that EM Telcos are still not in our view priced for mid-term GDP+ growth, and rising returns.
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