Mobile trends accelerated with margin expansion a recurring theme across the board. Both Jio and Bharti have recently discontinued their lowest entry pack which should sustain ARPU in the low-double digits, however the bullishness in mobile trajectory appears to have already been reflected in consensus.
A director at Bharti Airtel Ltd sold 71,000,000 shares at 1,814.080INR and the significance rating of the trade was 71/100. Is that information sufficient for you to make an investment decision? This report gives details of those trades and adds context and analysis to them such that you can judge whether these trading decisions are ones worth following. Included in the report is a detailed share price chart which plots discretionary trades by all the company's directors over the last two year...
India’s mobile sector sustained mid-teen growth again, though we expect a slowdown to high single digits from 2QFY25 onwards once last July’s tariff increase is lapped. Margin expansion remains a theme too. We stay constructive on India with Bharti Airtel as our preferred pick, but would continue to see Singtel as having more upside.
Still Bearish/Cautious; Stick With Defensives Since late-February (2/25/25 Compass and 2/27/25 Int'l Compass) we had been expecting an 8-10% pullback to provide a buying opportunity. However, after getting the 10%+ pullback, we discussed in our 4/1/25 Compass and 4/3/25 Int'l Compass how we no longer saw it as a buying opportunity, and we downgraded our outlook to bearish/cautious, citing several concerning developments. A historic selloff ensued. We then discussed last week (4/8/25 Compass) ho...
Over the weekend, Vodafone Idea announced that the government will more than double their equity stake to 48.99% from 22.6% through the conversion of INR 369.5bn (US$ 4.3bn) in spectrum dues. As of this writing, the stock spiked up by 19% today. Further to what we had previously written on the nationalisation of Vodafone Idea, we lay out our initial thoughts below.
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.
FWA will likely be the key themes of 2025 in Indian Telcos we think, with the market likely to be delivering 5m+ quarterly net adds by the end of the year. This is likely to drive renewed optimism towards Bharti and enable Jio to IPO. Given Jio’s valuation of approaching $200bn if it happens this is likely to be one of the biggest events in Global Telecoms this year. On rolling forward our DCF our Indus pt rises to INR 325 and we lift our recommendation to Neutral, and stay Buyers of both Bharti...
With the company unlikely to have been able to engineer a meaningful recovery by the end of the moratorium on payments to the govt, and the stock trading below the level at which it can issue new shares, we see the most likely outcome now as creeping nationalisation. Bad for VIL, but great for Bharti and Jio. We discuss implications for Indus in a separate note out today.
Various Middle Eastern Newspapers have reported that both QIA and ADIA are in early stage talks to buy the Indian Govt’s stake in VIL. We see this as a bearish development for the other Indian telcos, and potentially for VIL too.
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.
Bharti has immediately followed Jio's price hike announcement, with an announcement that it is set to raise its mobile prices by between 10% and 21%. We calculate the average increase is slightly lower than Jio. The change would be effective from 3rd July too which means the full impact of the tariff hike would only be felt from Q3 FY25.
Jio leads India's first mobile hike since December 2021; we expect peers to follow. The announcement was made after the conclusion of the spectrum auction where Jio only participated modestly. This is thus structurally positive. However, that both Bharti and VIL are trading down on this news is indicative of how much good news is already priced into Indian mobile. Our thoughts below.
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