Indus Towers says demand strong, 5G to make infra space even relevant

Indus Towers on Friday said the race towards 5G would make infrastructure space even more relevant and the market is poised for three robust and sound telecom operators competing with each other.

A day after announcing Q4 and full FY21 results, the top management of Indus Towers in an investor call said the demand environment looked strong "with heavy data growth" that augured well.

"New spectrum will be deployed and great network activity which takes place...which, in my opinion, is generally very good," Bimal Dayal, Managing Director and CEO of Indus Towers Limited (formerly Bharti Infratel) said at the post-earnings call.

Touching upon the demand environment, Dayal said the industry data volumes continue to grow and the growth is fairly rapid.

"With operators announcing race towards 5G, makes the infra space even more relevant...We also saw spectrum auctions taking place which saw participation from all three players but it was somewhat asymmetric. All in all, we see space we operate in, becoming more and more relevant," Dayal said.

Responding to analyst query on tenancy ratios, Dayal said the question has been whether there will be three telecom operators fighting among each other or whether there would be two operators competing with each other.

"Look at it from regulator's perspective, look at it from chronology as well, we do believe somewhat penny is falling towards three robust, sound operators competing with each other...," he said.

The tower infrastructure company is of the firm belief that there will be a three-player market.

"I am completely aware that struggles which, let's say VIL (Vodafone Idea) is facing currently as well, but chronology tells us where they are and where they were around last year, they have managed to do quite a lot of things, and from a tower company perspective, we certainly believe it will be a three-player market," Dayal said.

Indus Towers on Thursday reported a 38 per cent rise in consolidated net profit to 1,364 crore for the fourth quarter of FY21 and said digital transformation across sectors is driving new opportunities for shared infrastructure providers to usher in the next growth phase.

The consolidated revenues of the telecom infrastructure player stood at Rs 6,492 crore for the March 2021 quarter, up three per cent year-on-year.

For the full year ended March 31, 2021, consolidated profit after tax was Rs 4,975 crore, a dip of one per cent year-on-year, while revenues at Rs 25,673 crore was marginal 0.4 per cent higher.

It is pertinent to mention here that the merger of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers to create a mega tower juggernaut was completed in November last year.

Following the merger, Indus Towers is one of the largest tower infrastructure providers in the country and globally. The business of Indus Towers is to acquire, build, own, operate and maintain tower and related infrastructure.

Indus provides towers access primarily to wireless telecommunications service providers on a shared basis, under long-term contracts. It caters to all wireless telecommunication service providers in India.

Indus has a nationwide presence with operations in all 22 telecom circles in India, and as of March 31, 2021, Indus owned and operated 179,225 towers.