Bharti Airtel Shares Gain On Q2 Business Update

Shares of Bharti Airtel rose as much as 2.5 percent to Rs 369 on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, post market hours, the telecom company reported an increase in its revenue from mobile services in India for the September-ended quarter at Rs 10,811 crore from Rs 10,724 crore in the previous quarter. During the period, its subscriber base grew to 279.43 million from 276.81 million in the June quarter.

Defers financial results
On Tuesday, Bharti Airtel also informed the exchanges of its decision to postpone the announcement of its financial results for the second quarter of 2019-20 from 29 October to 14 November, as it awaits clarity on the recent Supreme Court verdict on the AGR (adjusted gross revenues) issue.

Last week, the apex court passed an order requiring large telecom companies like Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and others to pay up Rs 92,641 crore to the Department of Telecom (DoT).

Airtel said that it is now waiting for DoT to raise demand for the due amount.

The amount to be paid, which is expected to be Rs 21,682 crore according to sources of Business Today, will have material impact on the company's future earnings. The delay in results may be done to buy time for the company to provide more clarity on the effect of the verdict to its investors.

ARPU falls in September
Airtel's ARPU (average revenue per user) for the September quarter was recorded at Rs 128, down from Rs 129 in the April-June period.

ARPU is an important measure of performance for telecom companies and is calculated by dividing the total revenue of an operator by the number of users, or connections, on its network.

A similar movement was recorded for Reliance Jio as well. The Mukesh Ambani-led company's ARPU for the September quarter fell to Rs 120 with 355.2 million users, from Rs 122 with 331.3 million users as of June end.