Q1 2027 Bharti Airtel Ltd Earnings Call Transcript
Key Points
- Bharti Airtel Ltd (BOM:532454) delivered strong consolidated revenue growth of 5.7% sequentially, with Africa maintaining a constant currency growth of 5.7% and India (ex-passive infra) growing 3.6% sequentially.
- The company's consolidated EBITDAaL margin remained robust at 51%, with operating free cash flow of over INR16,450 crores, reflecting strong operational discipline and efficiency improvements from its 'War on Waste' initiative.
- Bharti Airtel Ltd (BOM:532454) significantly strengthened its balance sheet, with consolidated net debt-to-EBITDA improving to 0.7 and India (ex-passive infra) below 1, leading to sustained rating upgrades from global agencies.
- The Africa business is a major growth engine, contributing nearly half of the consolidated revenue growth, with a 20%+ constant currency revenue CAGR over five years, driven by low penetration (45% teledensity, 52% smartphone) and a young population, presenting a large long-term opportunity.
- The company is making strong progress in new growth bets, including its NBFC lending services going live in just nine months, Airtel Payments Bank reaching a 120 million monthly transacting user base, and Airtel Cloud adding 11 new customers, while data center ambitions target 1 gigawatt with clear line of sight.
- In India, Bharti Airtel Ltd (BOM:532454) added a record 1 million postpaid customers in the quarter, and its AI-led initiatives, such as the anti-spam solution and endpoint-based inferencing for field engineers, are driving cost efficiencies and operational improvements.
- The Homes segment saw a moderation in net adds (473,000) due to a strategic pullback from aggressive low-entry pricing for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), which had led to higher churn and weaker customer quality, impacting short-term growth.
- Rising global memory and chipset prices have challenged FWA unit economics, forcing Bharti Airtel Ltd (BOM:532454) to tighten acquisition quality and pivot more towards fiber, which could slow overall home broadband expansion in the near term.
- Management reiterated that the industry's long-term pricing architecture remains unrepaired, with unlimited data plans capping ARPU, and noted that a correction is not imminent, limiting the potential for tariff-hike-driven ARPU growth.
- The B2B segment's margin outlook may trend slightly downwards as the portfolio shifts towards digital services like cloud and CPaaS, which have lower margins compared to traditional connectivity, despite faster revenue growth.
- The company faces significant cost headwinds from rising diesel prices, which were only partially mitigated by seasonal solar benefits and one-offs, with the full impact expected to be felt in subsequent quarters.
- Bharti Airtel Ltd (BOM:532454) acknowledged that the B2B cloud business has a long gestation period for customer decisions due to integration efforts and egress costs, indicating that significant revenue contribution from this segment will take time to materialize.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Vaidehi Sharma, the moderator for this webinar. Welcome to the Bharti Airtel Limited and Bharti Hexacom Limited first quarter ended June 30, 2026, earnings webinar.
Present with us today is the senior leadership team of Bharti Airtel and Bharti Hexacom Limited. I must remind you that the overview and discussions today may include certain forward-looking statements that must be viewed in conjunction with the risks that we face. Post the management opening remarks, we will open up for an interactive Q&A session. (Operator Instructions)
With this, I would now like to hand over to Mr. Gopal Vittal for his opening remarks.
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the quarter one earnings call. I have with me Shashwat Sharma, Akhil and Naval.
Let me comment on the overall performance as well as the new bets that we are focused on before I hand over to
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