Airtel has its presence across multiple continents. While the majority of its business is in India, the company is witnessing impressive growth in Africa. Airtel's vice chairma and managing director, Gopal Vittal, said in the recently held Q4 FY25 earnings call that Airtel Africa is actually growing 2x faster than the Indian business.
"Africa is growing solidly, even more than India, almost at 2x in terms of growth…all companies need growth, and so, we will look at opportunities to buy more…all our (earlier) buying has been at good value," Vittal said.
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Bharti Airtel Looks to Get More Stake in Airtel Africa
Bharti Airtel is eyeing to buy more stake in the African business unit. This is because of the growth that Airtel Africa is witnessing. Africa is a growing nation and digitalisation is still in the nascent stages there. Thus, it is an opportunity for the company to get more stake in a growing business. Earlier in 2025, Bharti Airtel added 5% stake in Airtel Africa. This move took the telco's stake in the company to 62%.
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"The second tranche of the share buyback will amount to a maximum of $55 million and is anticipated to end on or before 19 November 2025," Airtel Africa said.
For the unaware, Airtel Africa has started the second tranche of its $100 million share buyback programme. Airtel Africa has around 166.1 million users. There's still an opportunity for the company to add several hundred million users in Africa and also premiumise services to boost average revenue per user (ARPU).
Airtel Africa's Q4 FY25 profit stood at $80 million on revenue growth. This is great position for Airtel Afria, as just a year back, in the same quarter, the company had posted a net loss of $91 million.
