Bharti Airtel Ltd’ planned $ 2.8 billion equity issuance will improve its net leverage to around 2.0x (end-March 2021: 2.1x) and provide funds to strengthen its market position, according to Fitch Ratings.<\/p>\n
Bharti will raise equity in three tranches, a quarter of the proceeds to be received upfront and the balance in two instalments within three years.<\/p>\n
Bharti’s management remains committed to an investment-grade rating. The company raised about $9 billion in FY20 and FY21 via equity issuance, selling a stake in subsidiary Airtel Africa Plc and the sale-and-leaseback of towers in Africa. The comoany management aspires to achieve a debt\/EBITDA ratio of around 2.0x in the long term, Fitch said. Bharati carries a rating of \u201cBBB-\/Negative\u201d.<\/p>\n
Fitch has forecast that Bharti’s capex will increase to about $5 billion in FY22 (FY21: $4.6 billion), of which $1.5 billion is likely to be paid upfront to acquire 5G spectrum assets.<\/p>\n
The company will seek to strengthen its fibre infrastructure – connecting towers with fibre and backhaul infrastructure to prepare its network to launch 5G services in 2022-2023. The capex on 5G infrastructure during 2022-2023 will replace 4G investments, as 4G coverage is largely complete, the rating agency added.<\/p>\n
Bharti’s revenue and EBITDA grew by 15 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively, year-on-year in Q1FY22. The industry’s monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) is expected to rise by 15-20 per cent to Rs 175 ($2.4) in the next 12 months (Q1FY22: Rs 146). This rise in ARPU is driven by headline tariff increases and increasing migration of 2G users to higher-priced 4G plans.<\/p>\n
Bharti increased the minimum amount that a prepaid user must pay to keep a number active to Rs 79 ($1) from Rs 49. Management believes that industry-blended ARPU needs to increase to around Rs 200 in the next 12 months and to Rs 300 in the medium term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bharti Airtel Ltd’ planned $ 2.8 billion equity issuance will improve its net leverage to around 2.0x (end-March 2021: 2.1x) and provide funds to strengthen its market position, according to Fitch Ratings. Bharti will raise equity in three tranches, a quarter of the proceeds to be received upfront and the balance in two instalments within three years. Bharti’s management remains committed to an investment-grade rating. The company raised about $9 billion in FY20 and FY21 via equity issuance, selling a stake in subsidiary Airtel Africa Plc and the sale-and-leaseback of towers in Africa. The comoany management aspires to achieve a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}