Revenue growth on cards for Jio, Airtel; user loss to weigh on Vodafone Idea
Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are set to report sequential revenue growth in their mobile business in India in the fiscal third quarter, fuelled by strong broadband user growth and a surge in data consumption driven by the recent Cricket World Cup, analysts said. Vodafone Idea's mobile revenue, though, is likely to remain stagnant sequentially in the December quarter, stung by heavy customer losses.
Analysts expect Airtel to turn in a stronger average revenue per user (ARPU) than Jio in the three months ended December 31 as the latter's growth on this score is likely to be restricted by wide adoption of unlimited data packs by 5G users.
Jio, though, is expected to add more customers overall than Airtel, on the back of strong demand for its affordable internet-enabled feature phone, Jio Bharat.
BoFA Securities said its internal checks suggest that the capacity build-up of Jio Bharat phones since the device's launch last July is already at 10 million in trade channels, with 50-60% of these phones activated so far.
The brokerage estimates Jio and Airtel to add 9.2 million and 3.5 million mobile users in Q3FY24 respectively, largely at the expense of cash-strapped Vi, which is likely to lose another 4.5 million customers amid its continuing inability to compete with its bigger rivals.
«We estimate Jio and Bharti's India revenues to rise 2.3%/ 1.7% on-quarter respectively, benefiting from strong/steady subscriber additions, while Vi's is slated to grow just 0.1% sequentially due to losses on this score,» ICICI Securities said in a research note.
Jio and Airtel have a headstart over Vi on the 5G front too, with both poised to launch shortly the nextgen mobile broadband services nationwide. Loss-making Vi has still to
