Hold Bharti Airtel: target of Rs 1960: ICICI Securities

ICICI Securities's research report on Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel (Bharti) delivered an impressive performance yet again, with steady market share win, strong incremental EBITDA margin, disciplined capex, and consequently, FCF (after finance cost) of INR 145bn; in parallel, net debt ebbed INR 130bn in Q1FY26. This was supported by a strong showing in the non-mobile segment and Airtel Africa. Bharti is now expanding its TAM with new frontiers in cloud and software services powered by AI, which they are taking to the global market that has a large opportunity. It has implemented solutions and proven scale for group companies. Bharti is already investing in other digital services, including data centre, IoT, Security and CPaaS, which continue to drive growth. It also has multiple value-unlocking opportunities which could add to shareholder value creation along with rewarding FCF.

Outlook

We increase FY26E/FY27E EBITDA by ~1% each and our SoTP-based revised TP stands at INR 1,960 (vs. INR 1,990) with an unchanged EV/EBITDA multiple of 14x for the India business and 6x for Africa. Maintain HOLD.