Angel neutral on telecom sector; upbeat on Bharti Airtel

Angel Broking has come out with its report on telecom sector. As per the research firm, the Indian telecom sector is currently experiencing heat due to a number of policy uncertainties related to spectrum and license fee payments.

Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) reported modest GSM net subscriber addition data for February 2012. The subscriber base grew by 1.4% mom to 656.9mn. Net subscriber addition number stood modest at 8.8mn in February 2012 (highest in the past nine months), up 4.4% mom. GSM subscriber net addition was largely led by incumbents along with Uninor.

Operator-wise highlights
In February 2012, net GSM subscriber addition was led by Idea, which added whopping 2.6mn subscribers (30% of the total net subscriber addition), up substantially by 47.8% mom. This led to an increase in its overall subscriber market share to 16.9% in February 2012 from 16.7% in January 2012. Idea was followed by Uninor (whose net subscribers are growing aggressively since the past six months despite its licenses being cancelled in all the 22 circles), which added 2.3mn subscribers in February 2012.

Bharti Airtel (Bharti) emerged as a positive surprise by showing a sharp uptick in its net subscriber addition to 1.8mn (highest since the past eight months), up 40.1% mom. Bharti has almost doubled its net subscriber addition run rate in the past two months and is possibly driven by the need to protect/increase its market share.

Net subscriber addition of Vodafone and Aircel remained largely flat mom at 0.84mn and 0.80mn, respectively. To everyone

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