Africa's Growth Rate Fell 8 Points. In Constant Currency, It Didn't Move.
Over these 12 quarters: share price Rs. 1,032 to Rs. 1,757 (+70%); operating income 10,180 to 21,206 Rs. crore; operating income margin 26.9% to 34.8%. One graph in actual numbers: bars are the quarter's operating income, over them the share price at quarter-end (left axis) and the operating income margin (right axis); each line is fitted to its own range, so read the timing, not the heights. Prices are adjusted for splits.
Bharti Airtel's Mobile Services Africa segment revenue grew 37.6% year-on-year this quarter (Q2 FY27, quarter ended September 30, 2026) in rupee terms - a real, roughly 8-percentage-point deceleration from last quarter's reported 45.4% - but almost all of that deceleration is a currency-translation effect, not a change in the underlying business. Last quarter's post showed Africa carrying almost half of Bharti's consolidated growth, and this quarter's slower headline number reads like that growth story losing steam. It mostly didn't: in constant currency, the basis Bharti itself uses to describe Africa's underlying growth, this quarter's rate comes in almost identical to last quarter's - see the numbers below. The deceleration sits entirely in currency translation layered on top of a business still growing at a steady pace.
The constant-currency number barely moved; the rupee-translation effect is what moved
Africa's underlying growth rate - in the local currencies it actually operates in - held essentially flat quarter to quarter. Last quarter's post cited Africa's constant-currency growth at 21.1% YoY; this quarter's investor presentation states Africa revenue in constant currency grew to $1,958 Mn, up 20.6% from $1,624 Mn a year earlier, driven by growth "across all regions i.e. Nigeria, East Africa and Francophone." Mobile Services Africa's rupee-reported segment revenue, by contrast, cooled from +45.4% YoY to +37.6% YoY - a real but much smaller deceleration than the constant-currency figures alone would suggest is happening to the business. Separately, the press release's own Africa narrative states Africa's own reported-currency (US dollar) revenue grew 25.7% YoY this quarter - a different measure again, on a different base than either the rupee segment figure or last quarter's reported growth, and not directly comparable to either without more detail than this quarter's source documents disclose; it is mentioned here for completeness, not used in the comparison above. The lesson carries forward regardless: any quarter-to-quarter comparison of Bharti's Africa revenue growth is most reliable read on the constant-currency line, which is the one metric here using the same basis both quarters.
India mobile revenue did the opposite - it crossed back above 10% for the first time in four quarters
India mobile revenue grew 10.1% YoY this quarter, ending a streak first flagged as broken in the Dec-25 post and tracked through Mar-26 and Jun-26, where growth sat below the 10% mark for three consecutive quarters (9.7%-equivalent India revenue growth in Jun-26, with mobile specifically at 9.2%). The company's own press release credits "higher ARPU and strong growth in smartphone data customers additions." Mobile Services India» ARPU rose to Rs271, up from Rs264 last quarter and Rs256 a year ago - a 5.9% YoY gain - while postpaid net additions hit 1.2 million, which the company calls its "strongest performance in any single quarter," taking the postpaid base (within the Mobile Services India segment alone) to 31.2 million. Overall India revenue (the company's own regional total across all its India segments - Mobile Services India, Homes, Digital TV, Airtel Business and Passive Infrastructure Services - net of intra-India eliminations) grew 9.4% YoY to Rs42,308 crore.
The real Africa news wasn't growth - it was the IPO actually happening
Airtel Money, teased last quarter as "preparing for a London listing in the second half of 2026," completed that listing on October 14, 2026 - a disclosed subsequent event - and this quarter's sole exceptional item is the provision for the IPO's own expenses. The Rs180.2 crore exceptional charge Bharti booked this quarter is explicitly described as "provision for expenses towards initial public offer in one of the Group's subsidiary in Africa" - the first hard financial evidence that the listing tease from last quarter's deck was a real, costed plan rather than a forward-looking aspiration. See Beyond the Usual for the listing's terms and the accounting wrinkle it creates.
The Prescription
Bharti should keep leading with Africa's constant-currency growth rate ahead of the reported figure in every disclosure that discusses Africa, not just the press release's body copy. This quarter's press release narrative does exactly that - "Africa delivered yet another quarter of robust growth of 20.6% YoY in Constant Currency... Reported Revenue growth also came in strong at 25.7% YoY," constant currency stated first. The segment note and investor-presentation segment tables, by contrast, still show only the rupee-translated figure (the 37.6% YoY this post uses in the Segment Comparison table above), with no constant-currency column alongside it. A reader who only looks at those tables, without reading the narrative text closely, would see a deceleration in Africa's growth rate without any indication that most of it is a currency effect rather than a business one. Putting the constant-currency figure directly in the segment table itself - not just the prose - would close that gap.
What it should stop doing: presenting Airtel Payments Bank's turnaround - EBITDA margin recovering from -15.9% in Dec-25 to 14.2% this quarter - only inside a dense associate-accounting table buried past the operational KPI sections, with no narrative framing at all. Airtel Payments Bank is the India leg of the same "financial services" growth bet the company is now explicitly calling out (alongside Airtel Money and the new NBFC lending push) as a strategic priority; a business that just swung from a double-digit EBITDA loss to a double-digit EBITDA margin in three quarters is a genuine proof point for that bet, and it deserves a sentence of its own, not silent burial in a disclosure table that exists only because Ind AS requires associate-level disclosure.
Key Financial Metrics
Rs. crore; margin is operating income as a percent of net revenue, per quarter.
Q2 FY27 (quarter ended Sep 30, 2026) vs. Q2 FY26, consolidated, audited
FX rates below are the company's own disclosed RBI reference rates for the quarter: INR 95.49 = USD 1 (average, for income-statement lines) and INR 96.03 = USD 1 (September 30, 2026 close, for balance-sheet and market-cap figures); the year-ago quarter used INR 87.28 (average) and INR 88.76 (close). The rupee weakened roughly 9.4% against the dollar on an average basis over the year.
| Metric | Q2 FY27 (INR) | Q2 FY27 (USD) | Q2 FY26 (INR) | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | Rs60,877.5 crore | ~$6.37B | Rs52,145.4 crore | +16.7% |
| EBITDA» (audited results' own profit-before-D&A measure - profit before depreciation, amortization, finance costs, share of profit/(loss) of associates and joint ventures, exceptional items and tax, includes other income) | Rs35,822.8 crore | ~$3.75B | Rs30,289.1 crore | +18.3%, margin 58.8% - a fresh site-high quarterly margin (the investor presentation's own EBITDA, which excludes other income, is Rs35,240 crore / 57.9% margin this quarter, vs. a deck-basis Rs29,919.0 crore / 57.4% margin a year ago) |
| Operating Income» (EBIT, audited; EBITDA minus D&A) | Rs21,205.7 crore | ~$2.22B | Rs17,107.0 crore | +23.9%, margin 34.8% vs 32.8% |
| Profit before exceptional items and tax (audited) | Rs15,608.2 crore | ~$1.63B | Rs12,322.3 crore | +26.7% |
| Exceptional items (net) | Rs180.2 crore charge - Airtel Money IPO expense provision, see Beyond the Usual | Nil | n/m | |
| Profit before tax (audited, statutory) | Rs15,428.0 crore | ~$1.61B | Rs12,322.3 crore | +25.2% |
| Net Income (before exceptional items, consolidated, company's own basis - owners' share) | Rs9,015 crore | ~$944M | Rs6,792 crore | +32.7% (company-stated figure) |
| Net Income» (after exceptional items, total profit for the period, audited) | Rs10,710.4 crore | ~$1.12B | Rs8,650.8 crore | +23.8% |
| ...of which, attributable to Bharti Airtel's own shareholders (audited) | Rs8,887.5 crore | ~$930M | Rs6,791.7 crore | +30.9% |
| ...of which, attributable to non-controlling interests» (audited) | Rs1,822.9 crore | ~$191M | Rs1,859.1 crore | -1.9% |
| Basic EPS | Rs14.25 | ~$0.15 | Rs11.72 | +21.6% |
| EBITDAaL (EBITDA adjusted for leases, company's own metric) | Rs31,488 crore | ~$3.30B | n/a (not disclosed in this post's source documents for Q2 FY26) | margin 51.7% |
| Capex (company-reported, excludes the land-parcel purchase below) | Rs12,467.0 crore | ~$1.31B | n/a | see segment detail below |
| Operating Free Cash Flow» (EBITDA minus capex, company-reported style) | Rs22,772.7 crore | ~$2.38B | n/a | — |
| Total Cash (cash and bank balances, end of period, audited balance sheet) | Rs7,446.2 crore | ~$775M | n/a | -18.3% QoQ (Jun-26: Rs9,112.5 crore) - drawn down by the quarter's capex and the Rs2,825.8 crore land-parcel purchase |
Exceptional items this quarter (a charge) and last quarter (a different, larger charge) both ran through African subsidiaries, but for unrelated reasons - last quarter's was a commercial-dispute settlement provision, this quarter's is the Airtel Money IPO's own expense provision.
| Balance sheet metric | Sep 2026 (INR) | Sep 2026 (USD) | Mar 2026 (INR) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Assets | Rs568,359.6 crore | ~$59.19B | Rs552,151.6 crore | +2.9% (6 months) |
| Total Liabilities | Rs368,967.9 crore | ~$38.43B | Rs356,188.2 crore | +3.6% (6 months) |
| Equity attributable to owners of the parent | Rs158,047.0 crore | ~$16.46B | Rs149,056.6 crore | +6.0% (6 months) |
| Net Debt (company-reported, incl. leases) | Rs166,580.5 crore | ~$17.35B | n/a (Mar-26 figure not restated on this basis in this quarter's source) | +5.9% QoQ vs Jun-26's Rs157,239.6 crore; -14.5% YoY vs Sep-25 |
| Net Debt excluding lease obligations | Rs88,277.1 crore | ~$9.19B | +7.9% QoQ vs Jun-26's Rs81,852.1 crore; -30.3% YoY vs Sep-25 | |
| Net Debt/EBITDA (annualized, company-reported) | 1.18x | essentially flat with Jun-26's 1.17x; down from 1.63x a year ago | ||
| Net Debt (excl. leases)/EBITDAaL (annualized) | 0.70x | down from 1.19x a year ago |
Where Q2 FY27's Revenue Went
Net revenue, and how much of it was left as operating profit and net income, in one view. Figures are the same standalone-quarter figures as the metrics table.
Rs. crore, Q2 FY27. Operating costs are net revenue less operating income; other items & tax are operating income less net income.
Key Operational Metrics
Arrow = the way the number moved; green = good for the business, red = bad, grey = flat.
A press release, investor presentation, and an audited quarterly financial-statement filing (the SEBI Regulation 33 results, segment note, and statutory financial statements) were sourced for this quarter and used as the primary source for the P&L, balance sheet, and figures above. No usable earnings-call transcript exists for this quarter's source documents - the transcript available for this quarter is, on inspection, a transcript of the prior quarter's (Q1 FY27, June 2026) call, not this one; see the note under Sources below.
| Metric | Sep-26 | Jun-26 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total customer base (consolidated) | ~692,579,000 | ~680,889,000 | +11.1% |
| India customer base | ~498,685,000 | ~491,890,000 | +10.9% |
| Africa customer base | ~193,893,000 | ~188,999,000 | +11.6% |
| Mobile Services India ARPU» | Rs271 | Rs264 | +5.9% YoY, and up sequentially for a second straight quarter, continuing Jun-26's reversal of the sequential dip |
| Smartphone data customer base (India) | ~304.6 Mn | ~301.8 Mn | +18.8 Mn YoY, +2.9 Mn QoQ, now 81% of the mobile base |
| Postpaid base (Mobile Services India segment only) | ~31,238,000 | ~30,004,000 | +13.5%; net adds of ~1.23 Mn this quarter are the company's own stated record for a single quarter |
| Homes Services customer base | ~15,369,000 | ~14,694,000 | +28.9%, net adds of 676K reaccelerating from Jun-26's 473K |
| Homes Services ARPU | Rs509 | Rs523 | -4.6% YoY - revenue and subscriber growth are both strong, but the average customer is paying less, see Beyond the Usual |
| Digital TV customer base | ~15,560,000 | ~16,003,000 | +1.3% YoY but -2.8% QoQ, with net additions of -443K this quarter (vs. -341K a year ago) - the decline is accelerating, see Beyond the Usual |
| Africa ARPU (constant currency) | US$2.8 | US$2.7 | +6.0% YoY |
| Africa data customers | ~89.9 Mn | ~87.3 Mn | +15.0%, now 46.4% of Africa's total base (vs 45.0% a year ago) |
| Airtel Money transaction value (quarter) | ~$68.8 Bn | ~$61.0 Bn | +36.5% YoY |
| Airtel Money active customers | ~60.9 Mn | ~56.5 Mn | +22.4% YoY |
Segment Comparison
Bharti Airtel reports seven consolidated segments. Five of the seven grew revenue double-digit percentages YoY, but margin moved the other way in three of them - Passive Infrastructure Services, Homes Services, and Digital TV each saw their segment-result margin fall YoY even as revenue grew (or, for Digital TV, grew only modestly).
| Segment | Revenue (Q2 FY27) | Revenue (Q2 FY26) | YoY | Segment Result (Q2 FY27) | Margin (Q2 FY27) | Margin (Q2 FY26) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile Services India | Rs30,943.1 crore | Rs28,116.7 crore | +10.1% | Rs10,675.6 crore | 34.5% | 31.3% |
| Mobile Services Africa | Rs18,816.5 crore | Rs13,679.5 crore | +37.6% | Rs6,492.6 crore | 34.5% | 32.8% |
| Airtel Business | Rs5,877.9 crore | Rs5,276.0 crore | +11.4% | Rs1,841.2 crore | 31.3% | 29.7% |
| Passive Infrastructure Services | Rs8,610.2 crore | Rs8,222.2 crore | +4.7% | Rs2,794.8 crore | 32.5% | 35.2% |
| Homes Services | Rs2,336.0 crore | Rs1,864.6 crore | +25.3% | Rs157.0 crore | 6.7% | 16.2% |
| Digital TV Services | Rs771.3 crore | Rs753.2 crore | +2.4% | Rs(131.8) crore | -17.1% | -8.0% |
| Others | Rs114.1 crore | Rs93.4 crore | +22.2% | Rs82.7 crore | ||
| Total segment revenue | Rs67,469.1 crore | Rs58,005.6 crore | +16.3% | Rs21,912.1 crore |
("Segment Result" is profit before finance costs, charity/donation, exceptional items and tax - an EBIT-level margin - per the audited segment note. Mobile Services Africa's segment revenue above is the rupee-reported figure used for consolidated reconciliation, not the constant-currency figure discussed in the opening section above; the two are different, equally valid measures of the same business.)
Mobile Services India
Rs. crore; margin is segment result as a percent of segment revenue, per quarter. Revenue is the segment revenue (segment note, incl. inter-segment); profit is the segment result (profit before finance costs, charity and donation, exceptional items and tax).
India mobile's margin expansion this quarter (31.3% to 34.5% YoY) came alongside, not instead of, the revenue reacceleration above 10% - the ARPU gain and postpaid mix shift flowed straight through to the bottom line rather than being spent on subscriber acquisition. Net customer additions, however, slowed sharply to 716,000 this quarter from 3,265,000 last quarter, even as the base kept growing - a sign the segment's growth is now coming mostly from existing customers upgrading (ARPU, data usage, postpaid mix) rather than new subscriber adds.
Mobile Services Africa
Rs. crore; margin is segment result as a percent of segment revenue, per quarter. Revenue is the segment revenue (segment note, incl. inter-segment); profit is the segment result (profit before finance costs, charity and donation, exceptional items and tax).
See the opening section above for why the 37.6% rupee-reported revenue growth shown in the table overstates the pace of the underlying business; Africa's segment result margin held essentially flat (34.5% vs. 34.0% last quarter), consistent with a business growing steadily rather than one accelerating or decelerating.
Airtel Business
Rs. crore; margin is segment result as a percent of segment revenue, per quarter. Revenue is the segment revenue (segment note, incl. inter-segment); profit is the segment result (profit before finance costs, charity and donation, exceptional items and tax).
Airtel Business grew 11.4% YoY for a second straight quarter of double-digit growth, and during the quarter entered a strategic partnership with ITI Limited - described by the company as "country's first PSU post-independence" telecom-equipment manufacturer - to help Indian enterprises "fast-track their digital transformation." No financial terms were disclosed for this alliance, and it is new this quarter; there is nothing to compare it against yet.
Passive Infrastructure Services
Rs. crore; margin is segment result as a percent of segment revenue, per quarter. Revenue is the segment revenue (segment note, incl. inter-segment); profit is the segment result (profit before finance costs, charity and donation, exceptional items and tax). Starts at Q3 FY25: earlier periods are not comparable.
Indus Towers' own operational metrics (reported separately by Indus and adjusted by Bharti "to ensure alignment with other segments," per the company's own footnote) show revenue per tower per month essentially flat to slightly down (-2.0% YoY), even as Indus added 14,406 towers over the year - growth is coming from more towers at a similar rate per tower, not from pricing power.
Homes Services
Rs. crore; margin is segment result as a percent of segment revenue, per quarter. Revenue is the segment revenue (segment note, incl. inter-segment); profit is the segment result (profit before finance costs, charity and donation, exceptional items and tax).
Homes net additions reaccelerated to 676K this quarter from Jun-26's 473K - reversing the deceleration flagged last quarter - but ARPU kept falling (Rs534 a year ago, Rs523 last quarter, Rs509 this quarter), and the segment's own EBIT margin fell to less than half its year-ago level (16.2% to 6.7%). Revenue and subscriber growth both look strong in isolation; margin and ARPU both point the other way. See Beyond the Usual.
Digital TV Services
Rs. crore; margin is segment result as a percent of segment revenue, per quarter. Revenue is the segment revenue (segment note, incl. inter-segment); profit is the segment result (profit before finance costs, charity and donation, exceptional items and tax).
Digital TV's customer base fell 2.8% QoQ this quarter (down from a roughly flat Jun-26), and its segment result has now been negative for five consecutive quarters going back to Sep-25, per this post's own trailing segment data - the worst margin of that stretch, at -17.1%, against -8.0% in Sep-25 and -11.2% in Mar-26. Revenue is still growing (+2.4% YoY, on IPTV adoption per the company), but it is a shrinking, loss-making satellite-TV business being kept alive by a growing IPTV add-on, not a segment with a clear path back to profitability stated anywhere in this quarter's source documents.
Not Attributed to Any Segment
Bharti reports seven segments plus two reconciling lines, and the company's own segment note shows every step from the sum of segment results down to consolidated profit before tax - nothing here is an unexplained gap.
| Line | Q2 FY27 (Rs crore) |
|---|---|
| Sum of the seven segments' results | Rs21,912.1 crore |
| Less: Unallocated / Corporate costs | Rs(76.2) crore |
| Less: Inter-segment eliminations | Rs(1,103.4) crore |
| = Total segment results (company's own subtotal) | Rs20,732.5 crore |
| Less: Finance costs (net, segment-note basis) | Rs(5,057.7) crore |
| Less: Charity and donation | Rs(66.6) crore |
| Less: Exceptional items (net) | Rs(180.2) crore |
| = Profit before tax (audited, statutory) | Rs15,428.0 crore |
The two reconciling lines ("Unallocated / Corporate" and "Inter-segment eliminations") together take about Rs1,180 crore off the segments' combined result, a small fraction of the roughly Rs5,300 crore gap between the segment subtotal and profit before tax - almost all of that larger gap is ordinary finance costs on the company's debt and lease book, not a hidden allocation. Note that "Finance costs (net)" in the segment note (Rs5,057.7 crore) is presented net of finance income, which is a different, smaller figure than the gross "Finance costs" line in the main income statement (Rs5,707.3 crore) used in the Key Financial Metrics table above - both are the company's own audited figures, just on different bases, and neither is wrong.
Beyond the Usual
Airtel Money's London listing is now a completed, costed transaction, not a plan
Last quarter's post flagged Airtel Money "preparing for a London listing in the second half of 2026" as a concrete first disclosure. This quarter's investor presentation confirms that listing completed on October 14, 2026, as a subsequent event: Airtel Money was admitted to the Official List of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority and began trading on the LSE's Main Market, via an offer of 270 million existing shares (10% of issued capital) at £1.96, with Airtel Africa plc selling none of its own shares and retaining a 77.85% stake. This quarter's sole exceptional item - a Rs180.2 crore charge, with a Rs70 Mn tax benefit and a Rs458 Mn allocation to non-controlling interests - is explicitly described as the provision for the IPO's own expenses, making this the first quarter where the listing shows up as a real cost in Bharti's own consolidated numbers rather than only as forward guidance. One accounting wrinkle worth flagging: the pre-IPO put option held by Airtel Money's minority shareholders stopped being exercisable once the listing completed, but because the listing itself happened after the September 30, 2026 balance sheet date, the company says the put-option liability "continues to be recognised as of 30 September 2026" - a textbook post-balance-sheet-event treatment, not an error, but a reminder that this quarter's balance sheet already reflects a liability that the company itself says no longer has any real force.
Sunil Bharti Mittal stepped down as Board chair after three decades
Following the company's AGM on July 9, 2026, founder Sunil Bharti Mittal retired as chair of Bharti Airtel's Board, and Gopal Vittal - who moved from CEO to Executive Vice Chairman as part of the succession plan first disclosed in the Sep-24 post - was appointed non-executive chair. Shravin Bharti Mittal, Sunil's son, became deputy chair, and Annika Poutiainen retired as a non-executive director; V.K. Viswanathan was separately appointed as a new independent non-executive director on July 22, 2026, joining the Audit and Risk Committee. Day-to-day leadership was already with Shashwat Sharma as MD & CEO since January 2026; this is the founder stepping back from the Board itself, the final step in a multi-year succession the company has now disclosed in stages across several quarters, while keeping a family member (Shravin) in the Board's second-most-senior role.
A Rs2,825.8 crore land purchase for data centers sits outside the reported capex figure
Bharti disclosed investing Rs28,258 Mn (Rs2,825.8 crore) "in strategic land parcel for data center business in India" this quarter - a sum roughly equal to a quarter's entire Airtel Business segment capex, but reported as a footnote to the Airtel Business segment table rather than inside the headline consolidated capex figure (Rs12,467.0 crore) used throughout this quarter's company highlights and this post's Key Financial Metrics table. This advances the roughly 1-gigawatt data-center capacity ambition first disclosed via the Google/Nxtra Visakhapatnam partnership flagged in the Sep-25 post, but a reader comparing this quarter's capex to prior quarters using only the headline figure would understate the quarter's real cash outlay by close to 23%.
The ARPU that's falling is the one attached to the fastest-growing segment
Homes Services grew revenue 25.3% YoY and added 676,000 net customers this quarter, both genuinely strong numbers - but ARPU fell to Rs509 from Rs534 a year ago (-4.6%), and the segment's own EBIT margin fell to less than half its year-ago level, 6.7% from 16.2%. None of this quarter's source documents offer a stated reason for the ARPU decline; it is consistent with the fiber-over-FWA pivot flagged in the Mar-26 and Jun-26 posts bringing in customers at lower average revenue per connection than the cohort it is replacing, but that is this post's own inference, not a company statement, and should be read as such until a future call or filing confirms or corrects it.
Three long-running threads stayed silent again
The Indus Towers stake-increase plan (from 51% toward 56%, first disclosed as an "enabling provision" in the Sep-25 post), the Adani Data Networks 26 GHz spectrum deal, and the Bharti Hexacom tower-transfer pause all go unmentioned in this quarter's quarterly report, press release, and presentation, continuing a silence that has now run for several consecutive quarters on all three threads. Bharti Airtel's own dividend policy to its NSE/BSE shareholders also goes unmentioned in every source document available for this post; whether an analyst asked about it on this quarter's call cannot be confirmed here, since no genuine Q2 FY27 transcript was available (see the note under Sources).
The Quarter's Growth Bets: Financial Services, in Two Different Wrappers
Bharti is now running the same "financial services" growth bet in two separate corporate wrappers, and this quarter gives the clearest look yet at how each is doing. In Africa, Airtel Money's transaction value grew 36.5% YoY to roughly $68.8 billion for the quarter, active customers grew 22.4% to 60.9 million, and the business just completed an independent stock-exchange listing (see Beyond the Usual). In India, Airtel Payments Bank - an equity-accounted associate, not a consolidated segment - grew its monthly transacting users to 125.3 million (from 107.9 million as recently as Dec-25) and swung its own EBITDA margin from -15.9% in Dec-25 (a quarter the company itself says was hit by "one-offs pertaining to new labour codes and brand investments") to 14.2% this quarter, with Bharti's proportionate share of its net income rising each quarter since (Rs11.1 crore in Mar-26, Rs14.8 crore in Jun-26, Rs21.4 crore this quarter) - excluding Dec-25's Rs53.1 crore, a one-off inflated by the recognition of deferred tax assets rather than operating performance, per the company's own footnote. Both businesses are still small relative to the consolidated group - Airtel Payments Bank's entire quarterly revenue (Rs875.5 crore) is under 1.5% of Bharti's consolidated revenue - but both are growing faster than the core telecom business and both are now disclosed as named strategic priorities, not side projects.
Target Valuation Range
Cheaper than three months ago on the company's own quarterly multiple, and still well below Vodafone Idea's richer, distressed-recovery multiple - but the comparison basis differs enough across peers that this is a directional read, not a precise ranking. Bharti's own investor-presentation EV/EBITDA fell to 8.97x this quarter (quarterly-annualized basis) from 9.77x last quarter, as the stock gave back some of its prior gains while EBITDA kept growing. On a trailing-twelve-month basis - more comparable to how Telkom Indonesia's and Vodafone Idea's own most recent posts compute the same multiple - Bharti trades at roughly 9.4x TTM EV/EBITDA, below Vodafone Idea's ~17.95x (a distressed-recovery stock re-rating off a much smaller earnings base) and above XLSmart's ~4.47x (a recently-merged, still-unprofitable telco) and Telkom Indonesia's ~3.79x (a state-controlled incumbent trading at a persistent discount, per that post's own finding).
Market capitalization → enterprise value (September 30, 2026, company-reported)
| Line item | INR | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Share price (NSE close) | Rs1,758/share (implied from the company's own market-cap and share-count disclosure; an independent market-data source's closing quote for the day is Rs1,757) | ~$18.31 |
| Shares outstanding (incl. 1 Mn partly-paid shares, per the company's own count) | 624.1 crore | — |
| Market Capitalization (company-reported) | Rs1,097,300 crore | ~$114.26B |
| Net Debt (incl. leases, company-reported) | Rs166,580.5 crore | ~$17.35B |
| Enterprise Value (company-reported) | Rs1,263,900 crore | ~$131.61B |
Bharti's own EV/EBITDA, this quarter vs. prior quarter (two bases)
| Period | Enterprise Value | Quarter EBITDA (deck basis, annualized x4) | EV/EBITDA (quarterly-annualized) | TTM EBITDA (audited-statement basis) | EV/EBITDA (TTM) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 FY27 (Sep 2026) | Rs1,263,900 crore | Rs140,958.0 crore | 8.97x | Rs133,887.4 crore | 9.44x |
| Q1 FY27 (Jun 2026) | Rs1,313,100 crore | Rs134,394.4 crore | 9.77x | n/a (not computed in the prior post) | n/a |
TTM revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 (the last four standalone quarters, Dec-25 through Sep-26: Rs53,981.6 crore + Rs55,383.2 crore + Rs58,539.1 crore + Rs60,877.5 crore) is approximately Rs228,781.4 crore, putting EV/Revenue at roughly 5.53x TTM. P/E, on the company's own LTM-basic-EPS calculation, is 34.08x - a multiple that reflects the small-numerator effect of exceptional items on trailing EPS as much as it reflects growth expectations, and should be read alongside the EV/EBITDA figures above rather than on its own.
Peer comparison - each peer's own most recently published post, on that post's own stated basis
| Company | Period | EV/EBITDA | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bharti Airtel (this post) | Sep 2026 | ~9.44x | TTM, audited-statement EBITDA |
| Vodafone Idea | Jun 2026 | ~17.95x | TTM |
| XLSmart | Jun 2026 | ~4.47x | Normalized EBITDA, annualized from the quarter |
| Telkom Indonesia | Sep 2026 | ~3.79x | TTM |
Bharti sits in the middle of this group on a like-for-like TTM basis, cheaper than Vodafone Idea's distressed-recovery re-rating and richer than either Indonesian peer - consistent with the pattern Vodafone Idea's own Jun-26 post described when it called Bharti's then-range "roughly 11.6x-14.5x EV/EBITDA (directional only, not from a downloaded Airtel filing)." This post is sourced directly from Bharti's own filing, and the actual figure (9.44x TTM) comes in below that earlier directional estimate.
The share price itself moved modestly this quarter - down 5.1% from Jun-26's Rs1,852 close to Sep-26's Rs1,757, down 6.5% from a year ago (Sep-25: Rs1,878.4), and up only 2.8% over two years (Sep-24: Rs1,709.6) - too small a move to warrant its own section under this post's own style rule; it is folded in here instead.
Bharti Airtel Limited's audited consolidated financial results, segment note, balance sheet, and notes to the financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 (approved by the Board of Directors November 5, 2026); the company's press release dated November 5, 2026; and the Q2 FY27 investor presentation, which also includes region-wise and segment-wise operational detail, trailing-quarter figures, and market data. A transcript document was available for this quarter, but on inspection it is a transcript of the prior quarter's (Q1 FY27, quarter ended June 30, 2026) earnings webinar, not this one, and was not used as a source anywhere in this post; no section on management's framing of the call appears for that reason, and a correctly-dated transcript should be re-sourced before this post's next revision. Peer multiples are drawn from Vodafone Idea's, XLSmart's, and Telkom Indonesia's own most recently published posts, each on that post's own stated basis. Share-price data from independent market-data sources, used for the stock-price comparisons only, not as a source for any company financial figure.