Bharti Airtel:Q4FY14 Result Analysis

Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom operator, has announced its results for the fourth quarter and year ended March 2014. The result was in line with the street expectation. During the quarter, the company has shown a strong growth in both customer base and revenue. The consolidated total revenue of the company stood at Rs 22219 crore, up by 13.5% Y-o-Y and customer base reached at 295.9 million across 20 countries with a growth of 9.1% Y-o-Y in Q4FY14.

Consolidated EBITDA of the company registered a strong growth of 20.6% Y-o-Y to Rs 7307 crore in the said quarter and further its margin expanded by 1.9% and reached 32.9% in Q4FY14. Forex and derivative losses for the company during this quarter came in at Rs 152 crore as compared to Rs. 203 crore in same period of last year. Moreover, improved operational efficiency resulted in consolidated Net Income growing by 89.1% Y-o-Y to Rs.962 Crore. This growth was mainly driven by consolidated mobile data revenues which grew by 93.4% Y-o-Y to Rs. 1900 crore.

Coming to segment wise performance, mobile services India division of the company which alone contributes 50% of total revenue grew by 9.7% to Rs. 12083.5 crore in Q4FY14 as against Rs. 11017.3 crore in same period of the last year. Mobile services Africa division, which accounts for 29% of total revenue showed double digit growth of 16.5% and stood at Rs. 7062.3 crore in Q4FY14. Moreover,  Mobile services South Asia and Airtel business also showed strong growth and went up by 28% and 24% respectively.

As far as the company's whole year performance is concerned, the consolidated revenues stood at Rs. 85746 crore in FY’14, registering a growth of 11.5% over the previous year which is mainly driven by growth in mobile data (96.3%), DTH (27.5%), Airtel Business (19.1%) and South Asia (41.2%). Consolidated EBITDA of the company went up by 19.4% during the said year. Moreover, EBITDA margin also improved by 2.2% to 32.4% Y-o-Y in  FY’14. Further, its Net Income for FY’14 increased by 21.8% to Rs 2773 crore as compared to Rs. 2275.7 crore in FY’14. At CMP of Rs. 335.15 per share, it is trading at 47.8x of its trailing 12-months earning.