Altman Z″
Needs current assets and current liabilities.
BHARTIARTL · Telecommunication · INE397D01024
Analyst mean 1.69 · 32 analysts · 86% bullishBharti Airtel Limited displays strong operational momentum and balance sheet deleveraging, with net debt to EBITDAaL improving to 1.1x in FY2026 and 0.7x in Q1 FY2027. The business model is driven by expanding India mobile ARPU (reaching ₹264/month in Q1 FY2027), 5G Standalone Fast Lane monetization, and high-margin digital adjacencies including Airtel Business enterprise ICT, Nxtra data centers, and Airtel Money. While consolidated top-line figures reflect the full line-by-line consolidation of Indus Towers, core operating cash flows remain at record levels (₹60,424.20 crore in FY2026), supporting a 50% YoY increase in recommended dividends to ₹24 per share. Documents evaluated: ca87613b-39c3-4571-8ea9-8f77df1b6428.pdf and f8f6a174-8601-4747-9d0d-bd6b85fe53fc.pdf.
Revenue share shows where the sales are. PBIT margin shows where the profit is — and the two rarely match.
Integrated telecommunication services ecosystem across mobile, home broadband, enterprise ICT, passive towers, data centers (Nxtra), and digital financial services across India and Africa, backed by industry-leading mobile ARPU and net cash generation.
Bharti Airtel Limited displays strong operational momentum and balance sheet deleveraging, with net debt to EBITDAaL improving to 1.1x in FY2026 and 0.7x in Q1 FY2027. The business model is driven by expanding India mobile ARPU (reaching ₹264/month in Q1 FY2027), 5G Standalone Fast Lane monetization, and high-margin digital adjacencies including Airtel Business enterprise ICT, Nxtra data centers, and Airtel Money. While consolidated top-line figures reflect the full line-by-line consolidation of Indus Towers, core operating cash flows remain at record levels (₹60,424.20 crore in FY2026), supporting a 50% YoY increase in recommended dividends to ₹24 per share. Documents evaluated: ca87613b-39c3-4571-8ea9-8f77df1b6428.pdf and f8f6a174-8601-4747-9d0d-bd6b85fe53fc.pdf.
Organic ARPU expansion trajectory and market monetization of 5G Standalone network slicing services.
Adverse judicial rulings on sub-judice DoT regulatory demands totaling ₹9,767.00 crore, or irrational competitive price wars in mobile data.
Numbered markers are corporate actions and, once the filings are read, capital and governance events. Prices are split-adjusted so the series is continuous.
The three to six things that actually matter about this company, each with the exact filing and note it came from — never a fact without the context that makes it meaningful.
Two kinds of item, both taken from the company's own documents: figures that disagree with other figures in the same filing, and disclosures that sit in the notes rather than the statements. Neither is an allegation — each is a question the filing raises about itself.
What the numbers mean when read together — computed from the filings, not a score.
Over the last year profit declined 9.4% even as revenue grew 19.6% — margins are compressing, and any premium being paid rests on a year that moved backwards on the bottom line.
Why this reading: Flagged because the pattern is clear, material, and not explained by the visible numbers — the kind of thing worth understanding before anything else.
Trailing revenue ₹220,049 cr (up 19.6%) but trailing profit ₹36,413 cr (down 9.4%). Rising sales with falling profit points to cost inflation not passed through, mix shift to lower-margin lines, or one-off gains in the base year.
Operating cash is 361% of trailing profit — the earnings are converting to real cash, not just accruals.
Why this reading: A positive signal: cash conversion at or above ~0.9 means reported profit is showing up as actual cash.
Operating cash ₹122,230 cr against trailing net profit ₹33,823 cr. Consistent conversion near or above 1.0 is a hallmark of genuine earnings.
Free cash flow swings between positive and negative across the cycle.
Why this reading: Surfaced for context, not as a concern — it only becomes meaningful if it persists or pairs with other signals.
Latest ₹76,683 cr, negative in 3 of 12 years.
Every score below is calculated here from the reported numbers — none of it is asserted. Open the notebook at the foot of the section to see each formula with this company's figures in it.
Needs current assets and current liabilities.
Piotroski F-Score — fundamental momentum — Joseph Piotroski, University of Chicago, 2000, in a study of whether accounting signals could improve returns among cheap stocks.
Nine yes-or-no tests across profitability, leverage and operating efficiency. Each pass scores one. It asks a narrow question: is this business getting better or worse on its own terms, year over year?
How to read it7 or more suggests improving fundamentals; 3 or fewer suggests deterioration. It measures direction, not quality — a weak company improving can score higher than a strong one holding steady.
Where it failsA single year of comparison, so one unusual year distorts it. Says nothing about valuation, competitive position or management. Piotroski designed it to rank already-cheap stocks, not to judge a company in isolation.
Needs trade receivables, current assets, other expenses.
Accruals are -16.8% of assets. Free cash flow negative in 3 of 12 years.
DuPont decomposition — Devised inside the DuPont Corporation in the 1920s and still the standard way to read a return on equity.
Splits return on equity into its three sources, so the same headline number can be traced to very different businesses.
How to read itA 20% ROE built on margin and turnover is a different proposition from a 20% ROE built on 3× leverage. The first survives a downturn; the second amplifies it.
Where it failsA single year. Negative equity makes it meaningless. Leverage is structural for lenders, so the third term carries no signal there.
Revenue grew faster than the capital behind it, which is what operating leverage looks like: the existing asset base is working harder.
cumulative operating cash flow ÷ cumulative net profit
₹620,341 cr ÷ ₹77,480 cr, over 12 years
8.01×
Above 1.0 means cash exceeds reported profit — the healthier reading.(net profit − operating cash flow) ÷ average total assets
(₹33,823 − ₹122,230) cr ÷ average assets
-16.8%
Negative means cash exceeded profit — the healthier reading. Positive above ~10% is where accruals start to dominate earnings.net margin × asset turnover × leverage
16.0% × 0.39 × 3.66
22.7%
Splits ROE into whether returns come from operations or from borrowing.EBIT ÷ finance cost
₹66,728 cr ÷ ₹21,555 cr
3.10×
How many times operating profit covers the interest bill.borrowings ÷ net worth
₹195,412 cr ÷ ₹149,057 cr
1.31×
Read against the sector — infrastructure carries more than software.growth in fixed assets + CWIP, against growth in revenue
capital +28% vs revenue +52%, FY2023 to FY2026
-23pp gap
Money going in far faster than revenue coming out. For an incubator this is expected — the test is whether it eventually converts.Needs more balance-sheet detail (only 3 of 6 flags testable).
NOPAT over equity plus debt less cash, at a notional 25% tax. Incremental ROIC is the return on money put in since then — the number that decides whether growth creates value or consumes it.
Return on invested capital, and incremental ROIC — Standard in corporate finance; the incremental form was popularised by Michael Mauboussin as the test of whether growth creates value.
ROIC measures what the business earns on all the capital it employs — equity plus debt, less cash. Incremental ROIC asks a sharper question: what has it earned on the money put in since a chosen year?
How to read itROIC comfortably above the cost of capital — call it 11–13% in India — means growth compounds. Below it, growth consumes. Incremental below headline means recent investment is earning less than the legacy business.
Where it failsDistorted in the year of a large acquisition. Understated for companies mid-build, where capital is deployed but capacity has not yet been commissioned — an incubator will look poor until it does not.
Read downward. Cash can cover EBITDA and still not survive capex — the third rung is where a capital-hungry business shows itself.
The earnings quality ladder — Not a named model — the standard sequence an analyst walks when testing whether reported profit is real.
Three ratios read in order, each stricter than the last.
How to read itRead downward. Each rung failing where the one above passed tells you exactly where the cash is going.
Where it failsA single year of heavy capex depresses the third rung legitimately. Judge it across a cycle.
The growth rate that makes today's market value equal the discounted cash flows, at a 11.5% discount rate and 4.0% terminal growth. Not a forecast — the arithmetic of what is already in the price. Compare it with what the business has actually delivered.
Reverse DCF — the growth already in the price — A standard inversion of discounted cash flow, used to avoid the forecasting problem entirely.
Instead of forecasting cash flows and deriving a value, it takes today's market value as given and solves for the growth rate that would justify it. The output is not a view — it is the arithmetic of what the market is currently assuming.
How to read itCompare it with what the business has actually delivered. A price implying 30% a year against a decade of 15% is a demanding assumption; the reverse is a modest one.
Where it failsUseless when free cash flow is negative or unusually depressed, which is common mid-capex. Highly sensitive to the discount rate — a point either way moves the answer materially.
Against a policy rate near 6%, most sound Indian corporates borrow between 7% and 10%.
Cost of debt — Interest expense over average borrowings — the effective rate the company actually pays.
What the lenders charge, which is a market verdict on credit quality that no rating agency delay affects.
How to read itAgainst a policy rate near 6%, most sound Indian corporates borrow between 7% and 10%. Read the direction over years as much as the level.
Where it failsUnderstated where a large share of interest is capitalised into projects under construction. Not meaningful for lenders, where interest is cost of goods.
Some figures appear twice on this page with different values. That is not an error — they sit on different bases. The live feed reports a rolling twelve months; everything computed here comes from the last audited statements. Both are shown so you can see which is which.
Where the two disagree, every model, screen and ratio computed on this page uses the filed figure, because the rest of the page is on that basis.
Models that need these lines are withheld rather than estimated: net worth, current assets, current liabilities, trade receivables, inventory, net block. Nothing on this page is back-solved from a figure the company did not publish.
Each framework below is a set of stated, mechanical criteria from published work, run against this company's own filed numbers. Passing or failing a screen is not a verdict — different frameworks disagree by design, and that disagreement is itself informative.
Benjamin Graham's stated criteria for a defensive stock, applied to the filed numbers. A company failing several is not disqualified — Graham designed these to be deliberately strict.
Two ratios only: what the business earns on its capital, and what you pay for those earnings. Designed to be ranked across a universe rather than read in isolation.
The fundamental half of William O'Neil's framework. The market and leadership components are judgement calls and are not scored here.
The characteristics long-term holders commonly look for: cash-backed earnings, high returns on capital, and debt that never forces a decision.
Median of the companies we hold in the same sector (Telecommunication). Every figure on both sides is the live feed's trailing twelve months, so the two are measured the same way whatever depth of extraction this company has had. A number only means something next to something else — expensive against the market and cheap against peers are different facts.
Segment share of revenue, FY2026.
Segment PBIT, FY2026. Revenue share and profit share rarely match — that gap is the point.
Bars are revenue; the line is net margin. Revenue rising while the line falls is the shape worth noticing.
Operating cash first, then what the business spent and raised.
One year is a snapshot. These are the two lines that matter across a cycle.
Rising debtor or inventory days against flat sales is the earliest visible sign of stress.
Set your own assumptions and watch the numbers move. A scenario calculator — the outputs are the arithmetic of your inputs.
One canonical set of figures — the same numbers used everywhere else on this page and on the screener.
How the register has moved over recent quarters — the direction matters more than the level.
Promoter held steady from 48.87% to 48.87% across these quarters.
FII trimmed from 28.75% to 27.13% across these quarters.
MF rose from 11.36% to 12.14% across these quarters.
Other rose from 11.02% to 11.86% across these quarters.
A holding percentage says who controls the company. This says whether the promoter has been putting money in or taking it out.
Per-share figures hide a share count that moved. Effective tax rate hides a one-off credit. Both sit here beside the payout, year by year, as the accounts state them.
| Period | Shares (cr) | Effective tax | Dividend / share | Payout | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | 609.36 | 25.1% | ₹24.00 | 43.3% | Face value ₹5 per share; total paid up capital ₹3,046.80 crore (6,09,36,00,000 shares). Issued shares upon conversion of partly paid-up equity shares. · Consolidated tax expense of ₹11,349.90 crore on PBT of ₹45,172.70 crore. |
| FY2025 | — | — | ₹16.00 | 24.8% |
An effective rate far from the statutory band is usually a deferred-tax movement or a one-off credit, not a lower tax bill. The note beside it, where the filing gives one, says which.
Where cash gets stuck. A rising inventory or debtor line against flat sales is the earliest sign of trouble in the numbers.
| Measure | FY2019 | FY2020 | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debtor days
How long customers take to pay | 19 | 19 | 13 | 13 | 10 | 12 | 16 | 14 |
| Cash conversion cycle
Debtor + inventory − payable days | 19 | 19 | 13 | 13 | 10 | 12 | 16 | 14 |
| Working capital days | -329 | -352 | -270 | -239 | -217 | -236 | -277 | -222 |
| ROCE %
Return on capital employed | 3.0% | 5.0% | 7.0% | 11.0% | 12.0% | 13.0% | 13.0% | 18.0% |
Operating metrics disclosed in the business review and MD&A. These, not margins, are what the business is actually run on.
Average Revenue Per User per month for India mobile operations
ca87613b-39c3-4571-8ea9-8f77df1b6428.pdf · p.2Total customer base across India and Africa
f8f6a174-8601-4747-9d0d-bd6b85fe53fc.pdf · p.64Read using the Telecom framework (from the listed sector). Primary valuation lens: EV/EBITDA, ARPU-led.
Read more closely in this sector: Spectrum and AGR dues · Capex against EBITDA.
The shape of the business over time (annual) — read the direction, not the single print.
| Line | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue from operations | 100,616 | 116,547 | 139,145 | 149,982 | 172,985 | 210,973 |
| Other income | -4,215 | 4,656 | 1,019 | -3,028 | 20,662 | 2,925 |
| Depreciation | 29,404 | 33,091 | 36,432 | 39,538 | 45,570 | 52,711 |
| Finance cost | 15,091 | 16,616 | 19,300 | 22,648 | 21,754 | 21,555 |
| Profit before tax | -3,432 | 12,483 | 16,561 | 12,679 | 38,398 | 45,173 |
| Net profit (owners) | -12,364 | 8,305 | 12,287 | 8,558 | 37,481 | 33,823 |
| EPS (₹) | -25.63 | 7.23 | 14.97 | 13.20 | 58.85 | 43.81 |
Exceptional items, total income and EBITDA are read from the filed statements.
| Metric | Sep 2023 | Dec 2023 | Mar 2024 | Jun 2024 | Sep 2024 | Dec 2024 | Mar 2025 | Jun 2025 | Sep 2025 | Dec 2025 | Mar 2026 | Jun 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 37,044 | 37,900 | 37,599 | 38,506 | 41,473 | 45,129 | 47,876 | 49,463 | 52,145 | 53,982 | 55,383 | 58,539 |
| Other Income | -654 | 1,013 | -1,308 | 2,010 | 475 | 9,675 | 403 | 592 | 809 | 562 | -2,198 | 661 |
| Expenses | 17,530 | 18,085 | 18,234 | 18,799 | 19,627 | 20,533 | 20,867 | 21,624 | 22,584 | 23,199 | 23,892 | 25,236 |
| Depreciation | 9,734 | 10,074 | 10,075 | 10,540 | 11,000 | 11,704 | 12,326 | 12,465 | 13,182 | 13,420 | 13,644 | 14,235 |
| Finance cost | 5,186 | 6,645 | 5,203 | 5,152 | 5,424 | 5,676 | 5,502 | 5,461 | 4,866 | 5,623 | 5,606 | 5,956 |
| Profit before tax | 3,940 | 4,108 | 2,778 | 6,025 | 5,897 | 16,892 | 9,584 | 10,504 | 12,322 | 12,301 | 10,045 | 13,773 |
| Net Profit | 2,093 | 2,876 | 2,068 | 4,718 | 4,153 | 16,135 | 12,476 | 7,422 | 8,651 | 8,503 | 9,247 | 10,012 |
| EPS | 2.39 | 4.34 | 3.66 | 7.31 | 6.31 | 25.95 | 19.33 | 10.43 | 11.91 | 11.63 | 12.02 | 13.09 |
| Item | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equity Capital | 2,746 | 2,795 | 2,837 | 2,877 | 2,900 | 3,047 |
| Reserves | 56,207 | 63,759 | 74,726 | 79,142 | 110,772 | 146,010 |
| Borrowings | 162,785 | 169,678 | 226,020 | 215,592 | 213,642 | 195,412 |
| Net block | 223,480 | 244,083 | 277,394 | 303,303 | 388,468 | 406,337 |
| CWIP | 5,726 | 5,955 | 49,425 | 16,904 | 10,999 | 12,938 |
| Investments | 27,550 | 29,349 | 32,954 | 31,602 | 5,838 | 18,901 |
| Total Assets | 344,417 | 361,207 | 444,557 | 442,019 | 505,006 | 545,373 |
| Line | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash from operations | 48,205 | 55,017 | 65,325 | 78,898 | 98,332 | 122,230 |
| Cash from investing | -27,286 | -41,478 | -39,232 | -51,089 | -60,198 | -56,205 |
| Cash from financing | -24,910 | -15,203 | -24,470 | -27,778 | -36,533 | -52,293 |
| Free cash flow | 21,091 | 28,996 | 38,875 | 38,970 | 58,990 | 76,683 |
| Net change in cash | -3,991 | -1,664 | 1,623 | 31 | 1,601 | 13,732 |
Cash from operations is the number profit has to answer to. Free cash flow is what remains after the business pays for its own growth.
The part no one reads — pulled from the annual report, auditor's report, concall and deck. This is the moat.
Bharti Airtel Limited presented its Q1 FY2027 financial performance, reporting consolidated revenue of ₹58,500.00 crore and EBITDAaL of ₹29,800.00 crore (51.0% margin). India mobile ARPU rose to ₹264/month driven by Fast Lane 5G SA network slicing adoption and postpaid customer upgrades. Management highlighted preparations for the upcoming London Stock Exchange IPO of Airtel Money in H2 2026, while scaling Nxtra data center power capacity toward 1 GW. Annual capital expenditure guidance was maintained at the ~USD 4.00 billion ballpark, focusing on transport fiber densification and AI infrastructure.
Confident and strategic, emphasizing quality ARPU expansion, disciplined capital allocation, and digital adjacency monetization.
Where analysts pressed management on the earnings call, and exactly how management answered — the questions that were hardest to answer are usually the ones that matter.
These are coverage counts, not ratings. Each one asks a fixed set of questions of the filings and reports how many the company answered. A company that discloses nothing counts nothing here — that is a statement about the disclosure, not about the business.
The same read, applied to the companies this one competes with.
Bharti Airtel Ltd. reported revenue of ₹58,539 cr for April to June 2026, +18.3% on the year and +5.7% on the quarter. That is in line with how this quarter has grown in recent years (+15.7% on average). It is the highest quarterly revenue in the last 12 quarters on record. Over the last four quarters revenue comes to ₹2.20 lakh cr, +19.6% on the four before.
Operating profit (EBITDA) was ₹33,303 cr, a margin of 56.9%, +61 bps on the year and +3 bps on the quarter. Over the last 8 quarters the margin has ranged from 52.7% to 57.0%, averaging 55.9%. Operating costs grew +16.7%, broadly with revenue, so operating profit kept pace with sales.
Net profit was ₹10,012 cr, +34.9% on the year and +8.3% on the quarter, with earnings per share of ₹13.09. Profit before other income, one-offs and tax grew 32.3%, so the profit growth came from the business itself. The tax rate was 27% against an average of 22% over the previous 7 quarters, which weighed on profit this quarter. Profit over the last four quarters totals ₹36,413 cr, −9.4% on the four before.
Telecom is capital-heavy: depreciation and interest take a large share of operating profit, so the operating line matters more than net profit in any one quarter. The quarterly statements do not carry revenue per user, subscribers and capital spending; those come with the filing read.
On earnings per share of ₹48.65 over the last four quarters, the stock at ₹1,899.80 trades at 39.1 times trailing earnings.
Written from the quarterly statements. The filing read adds the balance sheet and cash flow, the auditor's review, segment results, one-off items line by line and what management said on the call.
No check fired. That is a statement about the checks below, not a verdict on the company.
Could not run on this quarter: Exceptional items that recur, Cash behind the profit, Receivables against sales, Inventory against sales, Borrowing while holding cash, Auditor's review or audit report, IPO money used as stated, Related-party transactions, Exits, postponements, restatements, Promoter pledges and allotments, Earlier promises against delivery, When the results were filed. Most need the filing read (balance sheet, cash flow, auditor, disclosures).
Net profit a year ago, each driver's change, and net profit now. Blue added profit, red took it away.
| Q2 FY24 | Q3 FY24 | Q4 FY24 | Q1 FY25 | Q2 FY25 | Q3 FY25 | Q4 FY25 | Q1 FY26 | Q2 FY26 | Q3 FY26 | Q4 FY26 | Q1 FY27 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | ₹37,044 cr | ₹37,900 cr | ₹37,599 cr | ₹38,506 cr | ₹41,473 cr | ₹45,129 cr | ₹47,876 cr | ₹49,463 cr | ₹52,145 cr | ₹53,982 cr | ₹55,383 cr | ₹58,539 cr |
| YoY | — | — | — | +3% | +12% | +19% | +27% | +28% | +26% | +20% | +16% | +18% |
| EBITDA margin | 52.7% | 52.3% | 51.5% | 51.2% | 52.7% | 54.5% | 56.4% | 56.3% | 56.7% | 57.0% | 56.9% | 56.9% |
| Other income, % of PBT | −17% | 25% | −47% | 33% | 8% | 57% | 4% | 6% | 7% | 5% | −22% | 5% |
| Exceptional items | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Tax rate | 47% | 30% | 26% | 22% | 30% | 4% | −30% | 29% | 30% | 31% | 8% | 27% |
| Net profit | ₹2,093 cr | ₹2,876 cr | ₹2,068 cr | ₹4,718 cr | ₹4,153 cr | ₹16,135 cr | ₹12,476 cr | ₹7,422 cr | ₹8,651 cr | ₹8,503 cr | ₹9,247 cr | ₹10,012 cr |
| YoY | — | — | — | +210% | +98% | +461% | +503% | +57% | +108% | −47% | −26% | +35% |
| Core profit YoY | — | — | — | −7% | +18% | +133% | +125% | +147% | +112% | +63% | +33% | +32% |
| EPS | ₹2.39 | ₹4.34 | ₹3.66 | ₹7.31 | ₹6.31 | ₹25.95 | ₹19.33 | ₹10.43 | ₹11.91 | ₹11.63 | ₹12.02 | ₹13.09 |
| Flags | · | · | · | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 1 | ✓ |
Each quarter is read with the same rules. Balance-sheet and cash checks run on half-year and annual quarters; filing-read checks run where a read exists.