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 announce its 5G launch plans shackled by its pending fundraise.

In the absence of industry-level tariff hikes, analysts estimate Airtel to report 1% sequential growth in ARPU in the December quarter to ‘205, helped by improved postpaid penetration, while Jio’s is estimated to stay unchanged sequentially at ‘182. Vi’s ARPU is estimated to rise 1% on-quarter to ‘143, partly helped by increased pricing of entry-level plans in some markets and an improved subscriber mix.

Jio, though, is estimated to report the highest sequential jump in monthly average mobile data usage (AMDU) per customer among the three private carriers, driven by surging consumption levels as well as consumers upgrading to 4G/5G devices during the Cricket World Cup.

JM Financial estimates Jio, Airtel and Vi’s monthly AMDUs per customer to rise sequentially by 7%, 2.5%, and 1.9% to 28.5 GB, 22.2 GB and 16.1 GB respectively in the October-December period.

Analysts also expect Jio to report decent growth in its wired home broadband user base by adding another 0.5 million users in Q3FY24.