Bharti Airtel's Future Strategy: Tighter Control in India, Expansion in Africa Planned

Bharti Airtel Seeks to Raise Stake in Airtel Africa to 90%

Bharti Airtel Ltd plans to increase its stake in Airtel Africa Plc to as much as 90% over the coming years, according to chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal. The move is part of a long-term capital allocation and ownership roadmap as Mittal prepares for a generational transition within the group.

The comments came a day after Bharti Airtel announced a ₹28,200 crore share-swap deal to acquire promoter-group entity Indian Continent Investment Ltd's (ICIL) 16.3% stake in Airtel Africa. In exchange, Airtel will issue about 146.7 million shares, representing a 2.4% stake in Bharti Airtel. The transaction will increase Airtel's holding in the Africa business to 79%.

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Mittal, who turns 70 soon, also spoke about preparing for leadership transition and handing over the reins to the next generation over the next 10 years. He reiterated that promoter entity Bharti Telecom should remain the single controlling shareholder of the company, with a target of increasing its stake to 51% or just over 50% in the next decade.

Bharti Telecom currently holds a 40.5% stake in Airtel, while Singapore telecom operator Singtel owns 20% in Bharti Telecom, and the Bharti Group holds another 20.46%. Singtel, through Pastel Ltd, also owns a 7.5% direct stake in Bharti Airtel, while Mittal-led promoter entity Indian Continent Investment owns 0.9%.

Mittal said the "belief remains that you must have everything through one company that should be the controlling promoting shareholder." He added that dividends and future buybacks over the years would give Bharti Telecom the financial capacity to raise its stake in the company over time.

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Airtel Africa's ongoing buyback programme and any future block deals would help Bharti Airtel steadily raise its stake over the coming years, according to Mittal. He added that there are no plans to allocate capital towards acquiring other global telecom assets.

In the March quarter, Airtel Africa reported a 33% year-on-year increase in revenue to $1.75 billion, while net profit more than tripled to $199 million. Bharti Airtel's operating free cash flow rose 18% to ₹73,746 crore in FY25.

Bharti Airtel reported a 33.5% year-on-year rise in net profit to ₹7,325 crore in the March quarter due to one-time items and a high base effect. Consolidated revenue rose 15.7% year-on-year to ₹55,383 crore, driven by growth in mobile services, enterprise business, premium offerings, upgrades from 2G to 4G/5G, postpaid subscribers, and the Africa business.

Average revenue per user (Arpu) slipped for the first time in five years to ₹257 per month from ₹259 in the preceding quarter, reflecting slowing monetization momentum amid the absence of tariff hikes. Airtel attributed the decline partly to weaker international roaming because of the West Asia war.

Executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal said the price architecture in the country is broken, with Indian users consuming large amounts of data being capped at monthly spends of ₹340-350 due to unlimited plans. He added that structured small, medium, large, and extra-large plans would create a natural upgrade cycle and support higher Arpu growth over time.

The company also flagged concerns over rising smartphone prices and slowing handset shipments, particularly the pace of migration from feature phones to smartphones. It added that the impact of the West Asia conflict has so far largely been limited to rising prices and constrained availability of servers, memory, and chipsets. Rising memory and chipset costs over the past three to four months have made fixed wireless access broadband rollout significantly more expensive than fibre, Airtel said.