Bharti Airtel has reported an over two-fold rise in its second-quarter profit on Monday as the telecom operator’s first tariff hike in over two years boosted its revenue per user.
India’s No.2 wireless carrier’s consolidated net profit jumped 168 per cent to ₹3,593 crore in the July-September quarter against ₹1,341 crore a year ago.
Net profit still fell short of the average estimate of ₹4,398 crore by Bloomberg analysts as the company suffered a one-time loss of ₹854 crore resulting from a unit’s foreign exchange loss due to currency devaluation.
The company clocked quarterly revenues of ₹41,473 crore, 12 per cent higher than the year-ago period, aided by strong momentum in India and growth in Africa.
Bharti Airtel announced that Gopal Vittal — who was the managing director and CEO for the last 12 years — will move to the role of executive vice-chairman on January 1, 2026.
Shashwat Sharma, the chief operation officer, will be appointed MD and CEO of Bharti Airtel Ltd on January 1, 2026.
In preparation for this role, he is being appointed CEO designate of the company.
As CEO designate, Sharma will be responsible for the entire end-to-end consumer business, the company said.
The company’s average revenue per user (ARPU), a key performance metric for telecom firms, where Airtel leads its rivals by a wide margin, rose 10 per cent sequentially to ₹233.
This is higher than Reliance Industries-owned Jio’s ₹195.1 for the same period.
All three Indian mobile carriers — Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea — increased their tariffs in June for the first time in nearly three years, aiming to recoup billions invested in 5G technology.
While the companies had not raised tariffs since 2021, they spent heavily on boosting their infrastructure and are now moving away from aggressive competition for market share towards increasing profitability.
Bharti Airtel’s user base fell 0.7 per cent sequentially to 407 million as of September 30, hurt by users switching to cheaper alternatives after the tariff hike.
“We delivered another quarter of solid performance, with India revenue growing 8.7 per cent sequentially. Africa maintained strong revenue growth momentum as well with 7.7 per cent constant currency growth. The flow through tariff repair is in line with our expectation of ARPU increase and SIM consolidation,” Vittal said.
“We believe that industry needs further tariff repair for sustained investments given that ROCE (return on capital employed) for India is still only 11 per cent.”
The India business posted quarterly revenues of ₹31,561 crore, up 16.9 per cent year-on-year and 8.7 per cent sequentially, backed by improved realisations in the mobile segment.
With inputs from Reuters
