Bharti Airtel shares rally in morning trade: Here is why
Indian telecom carrier Airtel opened with a rally on the stock market on Wednesday morning, following the positive momentum it gained from better-than-expected quarterly earnings it posted last evening. Shares of the Jio rival jumped as high as 2.75 per cent to ₹1,870.70 apiece in morning trade at the NSE.
A staggering ₹11,022 crore was what Bharti Airtel earned as consolidated net profit in the quarter ending March 2025. This was more than five times the ₹2,161 crore the telecom giant earned in the same quarter last fiscal.
Operating in 17 countries across the globe, India’s second biggest carrier (by market share) saw its total customer base widen by 3.7 per cent to about 42.45 crore. In India alone, Airtel saw its standalone revenue jump 15 per cent year-on-year to ₹36,735 crore for the quarter.
Overall, the winning factor was the communication bigwig’s P/E ratio, which came down to a much healthier 29.37 in the quarter vs the overvalued 91.89 it was a year ago.
Things seem to be going Airtel’s way for now. It recently inked an agreement with SpaceX to bring Starlink’s high-speed internet services to customers in India, and would also explore offering Starlink equipment in its retail stores.
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It also entered into a strategic deal with Bajaj Finance to build a financial services digital platform, including “last mile delivery of financial services”. Airtel will not only have its distribution network to leverage but also Bajaj Finance’s channel of over 5,000 branches and more than 70,000 active field agents.
In the war of music streaming apps, Airtel seems to have won with its Apple deal. The strategic partnership allows the carrier to bring Apple TV+ streaming services and Apple Music to Airtel customers.
Airtel also brought in titans Nokia and Qualcomm to expand its 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) network and Wi-Fi solutions to lift its high-speed internet capabilities.
This means Nokia would now supply 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) outdoor gateway receivers and Wi-Fi 6 Access Points that employ Qualcomm Modem-RF and Wi-Fi 6 chipsets.
Airtel did not just stop there. It inked deals with Ericsson and Volvo Group for research on extended reality (XR), digital twin, and AI technologies in the manufacturing sector. With such measured future prospects and healthy financials, Bharti Airtel seemed to be back on track after losing the crown to Ambani-led Jio in 2019.
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