Bharti Airtel share price jumps over 2.5% on strong data subscriber base; Vodafone Idea shares fall

Bharti Airtel share price jumped over 2.5 per cent in the opening deals to Rs 426.30 apiece on BSE, a day after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) released the data. In July, Bharti Airtel added 3.26 million users and the mobile subscriber base of the telecom giant stood at 319.93 million. In today’s trade, the stock opened at Rs 420 and quoted day’s high of Rs 426.30 apiece, so far in the day. Analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services said that  Bharti Airtel has already surpassed their Q2 expectations with a 4.4 million expansion in its data subscriber base despite VLR (visitor location register) subscriber base remaining flat sequentially.  

In terms of wireless broadband users, which include 3G and 4G, the subscriber base of Bharti Airtel rose by 4.41 million to 153.25 million from 148.84 million in June. Research and brokerage firm Motilal Oswal Financial Services in its report noted that the number of wired broadband subscribers, after remaining flat for the past several years, improved at 6 per cent over April-July, 2020 (1.1 million subscribers added to 20 million). “However, Reliance Jio and Airtel surprisingly gained just 28 per cent share, while 70 per cent share was bagged by small fragmented players with market shares below 5 per cent,” said analysts at Motilal Oswal.

Vodafone Idea continues to lose

On the flip side, Vodafone Idea share price fell 2.5 per cent to Rs 8.48 apiece on BSE as it lost 3.72 million subscribers in July. At the end of July 2020, the mobile subscriber base of Vodafone Idea stood at 301.37 million. The telecom company also lost 1.18 million broadband users in July and its base declined to 115.26 million from 116.44 million in June.

VLR subscribers dipped slightly due to the declines in key circles such as Bihar, Rajasthan and Karnataka. “We estimate 2.5mn net adds for Q2, while they remained constant in July. However, the data subscriber base expanded by 4.4mn in July itself vs. our Q2 estimate of 4.3mn,” Emkay Global said. Vodafone Idea continued to see weakness, with net VLR subscriber base narrowing by 3.8 million. For the nine consecutive months, it has lost VLR market share (28.2% vs. 32% in July’19), Emkay added.

Airtel adds gross subscribers in July for first time since Feb 2020

For the first time in four months, Bharti Airtel has added gross subscribers in July 2020, adding 3.3 million gross subscribers to reach 320 million. “However, Bharti has maintained quality customers in line with its strategy, reflected in its market lead in MBB adds for the second straight month at 4.4m (i.e., 65% incremental market share),” said Motilal Oswal.