Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s No.2 telecom carrier by subscribers, reported a bigger-than-expected increase in second-quarter revenue on Monday, helped by 4G subscriber additions and higher revenue per user.

The company’s consolidated revenue from operations rose nearly 22 percent year-over-year to Rs. 345.27 billion ($4.17 billion) in the three months ended September 30, a Reuters report said.

Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue of Rs. 339.21 billion, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Meanwhile, according to a media statement put out by the telco-to-media company, revenue of Digital TV remained stable with a customer base of 15.8 million at the end of the quarter.

DTH business is showing early green shoots of recovery as an outcome of a strategy of simplifying pricing and offering converged propositions to win high value customers, the company said.

“We have been scaling our digital capabilities to deliver best-in-class experience and offering differentiated digital services to our customers. We have a robust customer base of over 190 mn MAUs across our key digital assets – Thanks, Xstream and Wynk. In our continuous endeavour to deliver additional value propositions to our customers through innovation, we launched Airtel Xsafe – an advanced home surveillance solution which allows customer to keep an eye on loved ones,” the statement added.

According to Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia,  “We have delivered yet another quarter with competitive revenue growth and improved margins. Our consolidated revenue grew sequentially by 5.3 percent and EBITDA margin expanded to 51.3 percent. The consistency of our execution is driven by the strength and resilience of our portfolio.

“Our B2B and Homes business continued their strong growth momentum while Mobile ARPU expanded to 190 on the back of premiumization and deep customer understanding. I do believe that 5G technology has the potential of bringing tremendous innovation into India. At the same time we remain concerned about the low ROCE that our business delivers due to pricing that is the lowest in the world. Given the large investments required to drive digital adoption in India we believe there is a need for tariff correction.”

Q2 FY23 Highlights 

• Bharti Airtel posts quarterly revenues of Rs 34,527 crore – up 21.9 percent YoY, backed by strong and consistent performance delivery across the portfolio and crossing 500 Mn customers globally.
• India business posts quarterly revenues of Rs 24,333 crore – up 22.3 percent YoY.
• Mobile services India revenues up 24.8 percent YoY, led by continued 4G customer addition and increase in ARPU.
• Airtel Business revenues up by 16.8 percent YoY, backed by robust demand for data and connectivity related solutions as well as emerging adjacencies.
• Homes business continues to accelerate growth momentum, up 38.9 percent YoY led by strong customer additions.
• Digital TV continues to strengthen its market share.
• India business posts EBIT of Rs 5,236 crore; EBIT margin at 21.5 percent – expansion of 639 bps YoY.
• Mobile data consumption up by 19.6 percent YoY, consumption per customer at 20.3 GB per month.
• Homes business crossed 5 million customer milestone with 417 K customer net additions in Q2’23.
• Digital TV customer base at 15.8 million in Q2’23, holding steady vs Q1’23.
• Airtel Payments Bank continues to grow rapidly through customer engagement – increases monthly transacting users by 60 percent YoY.