Bharti Airtel block: Indian Continent sells 51 mn shares for Rs 8,485 crore

Bharti Airtel Block Deal: Indian Continent Investment Limited, a promoter-group entity of Bharti Airtel Limited, has today sold around 0.84 per cent shareholding for Rs 8,485 .11 crore

Bharti Airtel block deal: Bharti Airtel share price was in focus in stock markets today after promoter entity, Indian Continent Investment, sold partial stake via large block deal.

 

"Indian Continent Investment Limited, a promoter-group entity of Bharti Airtel Limited, has today sold around 0.84 per cent shareholding (51.1 million shares) in Airtel through a market transaction, for an aggregate amount of Rs 8,485.11 crore," Bharti Airtel confirmed in a stock exchange filing.

 

Bharti Telecom Limited, the promoter of Airtel, anchored the trade by acquiring 12 million shares (approximately 24 per cent of ICIL’s sale of today), the company said.

 

 

This helped the overall book to be allocated only to key marquee long only names, both global and domestic.

 

On the bourses, Bharti Airtel share price rose 1.1 per cent to hit a high of Rs 1,695 per share on the BSE today. The share, however, pared its morning gains to trade 0.04 per cent higher at Rs 1,676 per share at 9:40 AM, as against 0.13 per cent dip in the benchmark BSE Sensex index.

 

Notably, the block deal follows Bharti Telecom’s recent acquisition of an additional 1.2 per cent stake (73.1 million shares) in Airtel from ICIL in November 2024. With this, Bharti Telecom now holds 40.47 per cent of Airtel, strengthening its commitment to cement its position as the principal vehicle to hold controlling stake in Airtel.

 

Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel has landed the new Southeast Asia-Middle EastWest Europe-6 (SMW6) in Chennai.

 

The cable is expected to connect India to Singapore and France (Marseille) crossing Egypt through terrestrial cables Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. It will bring 220 Terabit per second (TBPs) of global capacity to India, Bharti Airtel claimed.

 

The company said it had already landed the SEA-ME-WE 6 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6, or SMW6) cable in Mumbai on December 30, 2024. The same is expected to become operational in 2026.

 

According to Bharti Airtel, the cable would enable global hyperscalers and businesses to access international connectivity and data centre services in India.

 

"We are delighted to further strengthen our global connectivity by landing one of the largest cable systems into our facilities. This complements our existing network strength of 400,000 Rkms across 50 countries," Sharat Sinha, director and chief executive officer of Airtel Business said.

 

Bharti Airtel Fundamentals

Recent data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed that Bharti Airtel lost 1.14 million wireless subscribers in November, bringing its mobile user base down to 384 million.

 

Financially, Bharti Airtel saw its net profit climb to Rs 14,781 crore in the October-December quarter (Q3) of the current financial year (FY25), as against a net profit of Rs 2,442 crore reported in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal.

 

However, excluding the one-time gain from Indus Tower consolidation, Bharti Airtel’s profit was Rs 5,514 crore for Q3FY25.

 

Its revenue from operations jumped 19 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 45,129 crore, while Ebitda climbed 24.1 per cent to Rs 24,880 crore.

 

Ebitda margin stood at 55.1 per cent at the end of Q3FY25.

 

Bharti Airtel share price target

Analysts at Antique Stock Broking have raised their FY25-27 EPS (earnings per share) estimates by 2 per cent-5 per cent, factoring in stronger wireless/ home services subscribers, partly offset by a slight Arpu cut.

 

"We reiterate that another tariff hike in FY27 will drive earnings, while lower wireless capex will push free cash flow to record levels, pushing return on equity (RoE) beyond 25 per cent. We reiterate ‘Buy’ with a share price target of Rs 1,900 (previously Rs 1,822)," it said in its Q3 results review report.