Bharti Airtel Ltd
NSE:BHARTIARTL
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Bharti Airtel Ltd
Earnings Call Analysis
Q3-2024 Analysis
Bharti Airtel Ltd
The company welcomed the Telecom Bill of 2023, praising its simplification of complex licensing systems and predictability in spectrum availability. Emphasizing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts, they outlined their targets for improved power usage effectiveness and women's employment growth, displaying their commitment to sustainability and diversity.
Financially, the company grappled with currency devaluations in Africa but saw steady 3% sequential growth in India. They showed a healthy operating free cash flow of INR 7,250 crores in India, despite rigorous CapEx focused on expansion and modernization, which also contributed to improved net debt to EBITDA ratios, hinting at a solid financial discipline and investment in growth areas.
Segment-wise, Mobility observed robust 4G additions and steady postpaid growth leading to an Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) increase, whereas Broadband saw a moderation in net adds. Airtel Black's converged offering is gaining traction, providing stable revenue per account by addressing churn and improving ARPU.
Airtel Business experienced 1.7% sequential revenue growth with a domestic surge led by IoT growth. The signing of strategic partnerships signals an expansion into IoT with a revenue run rate nearing INR 1,900 crores, exemplifying their commitment to capturing growth in emerging sectors.
Strategically, the company plans to grow their broadband footprint through partnerships, launch fixed wireless access and invest in Airtel Black. This coincides with their postpaid family plan which aims to further their market presence in the segment, leveraging existing customer relationships for growth.
For monetization, the company believes in expanding their digital services onto global platforms, with an eye on extending services to other telecommunication companies worldwide, a move that suggests global ambitions and focus on leveraging digital service capabilities.
In tariffs, the company anticipates a modest organic ARPU improvement in absence of industry tariff actions, while continuing to focus on strategies such as feature phone to smartphone conversion and the transition from 2G to more revenue-generating technologies.
With the 5G user base growing rapidly, the company aims to deleverage using strong cash flows before considering a dividend policy, displaying a cautious and prudent financial approach in the face of substantial transformative investments.
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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Vaidehi Sharma, the moderator for this webinar. Welcome to the Bharti Airtel Limited Third Quarter Ended December 31, 2023 Earnings Webinar. Present with us today is the senior leadership team of Bharti Airtel Limited. I must remind you that the overview and discussions today may include certain forward-looking statements that must be viewed in conjunction with the risks that we face. Post the management opening remarks, we will open up for an interactive Q&A session. [Operator Instructions].
With this, I would now like to hand over to Mr. Gopal Vittal for his opening remarks.
Thank you, and a very warm welcome to the earnings call for quarter 3 '24. With me on the call, I've got Soumen, Harjeet and Naval. Let me briefly start with the Telecom Bill of 2023. It was a forward-looking and progressive bill, as I've mentioned before, and it was really in continuation of the reform that was announced by the government in September 2021. The highlights of the bill are that it simplifies the currently complex system, which includes various types of licensing into a more cohesive and efficient authorization-based regime. It also ensures predictability and availability of spectrum covering aspects such as refarming, harmonization, trading, leasing and sharing.
A very welcome move is the graded and proportionate penalty regime, which will bring in ease of doing business and compliance while increasing the enforcement rate. The RoW reforms seek to streamline approvals across the country. However, there still are challenges in some states as regards RoW.
A quick update on ESG, and let me start with our smaller business, which is a large power guzzling business, which is data centers. We are taking a number of initiatives in Nxtra. First on the environment, Nxtra has adopted the 3-R approach of reduce, reuse and recycle to minimize waste across all data centers and obtain the 100% landfill diversion rate in the next 2 years.
All newly constructed data centers will be LEED certified, either platinum or gold, or an equivalent certification. Nxtra is the first data center operator in India to install solid oxide fuel cell-based captive power plants and to deploy fuel cell technology. A new campus in Mumbai is designed for 0 discharge.
Over the past 5 years, Nxtra has seen a remarkable 20% improvement in power usage effectiveness with a further target to reduce 10% by 2025. Airtel as a whole, we've seen the number of women employees grow 1.5x as compared to last year. Another notable feature is the fact that 84% of all our site infrastructure managers at edge sites are ex-servicemen. On governance, we take great pride in our disclosures, in our transparency and our code of ethics.
Let me turn to our financial performance. Overall, we have delivered a satisfactory performance. Consolidated revenue of about INR 37,900 crores was impacted by currency devaluation in Africa, particularly the naira and the Malawian kwacha. India continues to grow steadily by 3% sequentially, delivering over INR 27,800 crores. EBITDA margins came in at 53.9%.
Mobile and Homes delivered consistent growth while Airtel business saw moderation on account of the slowdown in the global business, this I mentioned already in the last quarter. We remain on course with our strategy to focus on quality customers, deliver for them a brilliant experience putting digital at the core of all we do and strip out waste.
The company generated operating free cash flows of 7,000 -- just under INR 7,250 crores for India despite a front-loaded CapEx. CapEx for the quarter was INR 7,750 crores. And as I mentioned, our investments are focused on 5G, rural expansion, fiber deployment and data centers. Given our strong cash generation, net debt to EBITDA for India continues to improve every quarter and now stands at 2.91 versus 3.08 in quarter 2. We've paid another tranche of INR 8,325 crores of high-cost DOT debt. In this fiscal, we prepaid over INR 16,349 crores of high-cost DOT debt.
A quick update on each of our segments. In Mobility, 4G net adds momentum was strong at 7.4 million. Postpaid net adds was steady at 0.9 million, the third consecutive quarter of more than 25% of total net adds. ARPU was at INR 208 versus INR 203 in quarter 2, 2024, that's a INR 5 increase. And this improvement is really due to 3 key drivers that continue to kick in: feature phone to smartphone upgrades, prepaid to postpaid upgrades and driving share of wallet through a combination of data monetization and international roaming.
Our premiumization agenda to upgrade customers to higher value plans has been working well and contributing to ARPU growth in the absence of tariff hikes. Our 5G coverage expansion is on track despite no monetization. Growing 5G shipments are reflected in our rapidly growing 5G base as well.
Finally, we continue to deliver strong, competitive growth, further increasing revenue and market share, a key barometer of our performance in the marketplace.
Turning to broadband. We saw some moderation in net adds to 3.6 lakhs. This was on account of the peel-back of the entry-level plan at INR 199. So we've discontinued that plan, and that had some impact, which is a healthy impact because the ARPUs on the acquisition side are now improving. We're now present in 1,267 cities, up from 1,140 cities last year in the same quarter.
We added almost 1.5 million home passes given the momentum we are seeing in this business. Airtel Black, our converged offering, is seeing strong momentum. More than 40% of -- in fact, 47% of net adds are now on Black -- Airtel Black plans. This converged plan helps us offer customers more than 1 service of Airtel. It reduces churn, gives a fillip to average revenue per account.
We continue to strengthen our content partnerships and make Xstream a mainstay with more than 20 OTT apps on the single platform. We recently added aha, ALTBalaji, Fancode and Playflix on Xstream Play. Xstream Play crossed 5 million paid customers and continues to be the fastest-growing OTT aggregator in the country.
On the DTH business, we added 388,000 customers. This is the highest net adds that we've seen in the last 12 quarters. Revenue growth was driven by both customer adds and ARPU increase. Our strategy to focus on key markets of South, Maharashtra and Bengal, combined with our pivot to convergence creates a solid differentiation for our DTH business in the market.
Turning to Airtel business. Revenue growth was 1.7% sequentially. The global segment continues to be soft, while domestic is seeing acceleration. One of the big growth drivers in the domestic segment is IoT. We recently signed 2 big deals, one was a strategic partnership to power up to 20 million smart meters with IntelliSmart and offer end-to-end IoT solutions. This partnership marks Airtel's foray into high-end applications such as advanced metering infrastructure and meter data management systems along with a cloud platform and analytics layer. Second, we won an exclusive connectivity deal from Adani Energy Solutions to power an additional 20 million smart meters across various states.
Turning to the payments bank. Our monthly transacting users now stands at 58.6 million. Deposit growth has remained robust at 51% over last year, and the annualized revenue run rate now stands at just under INR 1,900 crores. We are, as I have mentioned, one of the few fintech players who is profitable in this segment.
Turning to the digital businesses. We're now delivering an annualized revenue run rate of just under INR 1,750 crores. Our focus remains on CPaaS, financial services, IoT, security and cloud.
Airtel Finance is scaling up well. We are now disbursing loans at a run rate of INR 620 crores per quarter versus INR 550 crores in quarter 2. Our focus is on building a high-quality book using our proprietary credit model. Our focus remains on large ticket loans, which is reflected in our average loan amount of INR 1,10,000. On Cards, we are continuing at an annualized run rate of 280,000 cards. We plan to scale this business by adding more products, including gold loan and embedded insurance.
A quick update on our strategy and how we see Airtel. As I mentioned, one of our critical strengths is a diversified portfolio. Africa now accounts for 27% of revenues; India mobile, 57%; and India nonmobile, the balance. This makes us a resilient business. Africa continues to perform well on an underlying basis with 6% sequential revenue growth in constant currency terms. We're also incubating the fast-growing digital businesses within our portfolio that come at very high margin and low CapEx.
Our second strength is our consistency in winning quality customers. And let me quickly update you on the -- on what I've spoken about earlier. And let me start with the high-value segment, which is really focused on the top 150 cities across both B2C and B2B. Within B2C, the top 16 million homes in these 150 cities account for over 35% of the industry revenue. The unique advantage that we have is the fact that we already have a relationship with these homes from Airtel. Broadband penetration in this segment is about 37 million and growing. Here, our focus is to continue our rollout, grow our partnership with a local cable operator and launch fixed wireless access as a complement to fiber.
Second, to drive convergence and lock customers in. As I've mentioned, our ARPA, which is average revenue per account, quadruples with conversions. The third key area of focus is to raise our sales and marketing effort to break inertia and switch these users on to our converged plans, which is Airtel Black. This is where our digital capabilities are coming to use.
Finally, postpaid. Our family proposition is now developing critical scale and is powering our growth of postpaid. Coupled with our deep digital understanding and spread of our small format stores, this segment is seeing strong momentum. Within B2B, as I mentioned, the top 500 companies account for almost 70% of industry revenue, and we have very deep relationships with them. We're doing 3 things here; first, stepping up investments in transport with our fiber strategy to ensure we keep ahead of their needs while building resilience for both our Mobile and Homes business. As the result, we have laid almost 60 -- just under 69,000 kilometers of fiber in the last 6 quarters.
Second, we are revitalizing our whole account management to raise capabilities for solution selling. And finally, we are stepping up investments in product and SI integration across CPaaS, IoT, cloud and security. The second segment is rural. I have mentioned before that we were under-indexed in terms of coverage. Our massive rollout this year of almost 30,000 sites has worked well for us. Be it customers per site, cost per site or competitive performance, all of this has met action standards. All of this has been possible with extensive use of digital tools and data science, and importantly, our razor sharp execution. This has now given us the confidence to take it one step further in the coming quarters.
Across India, we have a position of leadership in almost 60% of the country. Yet, in 5 key circles, Maharashtra, Gujarat, MP, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Bengal, we have a gap of almost 18 percentage share with the #1 player. In these circles, we have almost 25,000 less sites as well, leading to our absence in wide parts of these geographies. We intend to step up our coverage in these areas and build a tailwind for our business in the coming quarters.
Our third strength is the obsession to deliver great experience. We've significantly developed our digital capabilities around 4 key platforms linked to customer journeys; buy, build, pay and serve. So -- and actually, this applies to any business. A customer buys something, you bill them, they pay for it and you serve them. So whichever business we're looking at, the same platforms work. This is all federated omnichannel and sits on a common data mesh. These platforms have become so fungible that we're now looking to lift and shift into Africa.
A second area of focus and experience is to empower our teams with digital tools. So today, the whole country is divided into what we call 1 million grids. Grids are really literally 1 kilometer by 1 kilometer. Each of them has very granular metrics associated with customer experience and provide it to our frontline sales teams and our frontline engineers. We believe this way of working will reduce our churn going forward.
The fourth strength is to use the underlying digital capabilities to build new digital services. As I mentioned before, Airtel has 3 parts to its business model; digital infrastructure, which includes the network infrastructure as also the data mesh. This is the basis on which everything works.
The second part of our business model is our digital experience layer that's delivered omnichannel and for all customer journeys, be it a buying, billing, paying or serving journey. In fact, our Serve platform is capable of problem diagnosis, automatic ticket generation, automatic dispatch to an engineer, which is then scheduled and monitored and fed back to the platform for completion.
Given the scale that these platforms operate at, we believe there's an opportunity to extend them into other telcos around the world. We're starting with Airtel Africa immediately, and we'll then progressively look to take these to other carriers.
The third part of our business model is our digital services, which ride on the underlying digital infrastructure and digital experience. Our portfolio here includes Airtel IQ, IoT, Ads, Cloud, SD-WAN and Airtel Finance, all of which have been built in-house.
Given the scale at which we operate, these platforms are industrial-grade global standard. I'd also like to provide some more texture on IoT, one of our fastest-growing digital services. There are 3 parts to the IoT business. Connectivity is our natural right to play. Here, we have a market share of 55% plus. The market is growing rapidly here with the increased emphasis on digitization.
One of the big opportunities is to play a major role in the deployment of 250 million smart meter deployments in the coming year. The second part is then move up the stack by offering cloud and analytics. We've now built this and already won, as I mentioned, one large deal. The third part is to install and repair these devices, which can be done by our own delivery fleet since all of them are on our digital tool of Airtel Work.
The fifth and last strength is our relentless focus on War on Waste. As I've mentioned it earlier, it's now a way of life for us. We have seen very strong results over the past quarters with reduction in cost per site despite absorption of 5G costs. We believe we still have headroom to optimize through use of AI/ML-based solutions, solarization and optimization of wasteful sales and distribution spends.
In addition to this, our bet on NSA has saved us substantial CapEx and OpEx over the course of the year. At the same time, it has delivered a brilliant experience, as has been borne out in the 5 of the 6 awards that we've won, declared by OpenSignal.
To sum up, we've had another consistent quarter with improved cash generation. Our prudent capital allocation approach is showing results on ROCE improvement in the absence of tariff hike. We are still at a low level of ROCE at about 9%, but has -- have seen improvements over the quarters.
Our investments are aligned to build a future-ready Airtel with focus on quality customers and obsession for delivering a great experience, leveraging our strong digital capabilities and finally to strip out waste.
With that, let me hand back to the moderator for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Mr. Kunal Vora.
This is Kunal Vora from BNP Paribas. Congrats for a strong quarter. First, I wanted to understand the CapEx plan. So how should we look at it, like a couple of years back, you were at INR 15,000 crore CapEx, last year at INR 20,000 crores, this year, INR 25,000 crores? You indicated that this number should come down, but I just wanted to get a sense on how low can this be, like not only in FY '25, but longer term, let's say, how do you look at CapEx to sales? That's the first one.
So I think we've mentioned before, Kunal, that CapEx is going to be elevated this year. This is a big year of rollout. Vast part of the 5G has been rolled out this year. There's a substantial amount of rural rollout that's taken place this year. And then, of course, the usual investments that we're making in all our other businesses, including transport, data centers, B2B, homes, et cetera.
So this was 1 year where we had indicated it would be an elevated year of CapEx, and we continue to stick to that. I think the next year will moderate in terms of CapEx. We are not giving any specific guidance on this because it is a competitive market, and we will wait and watch. But I would say that we are confident that the CapEx will moderate.
Long term, what the CapEx to revenue ratio should be, I think it all depends on what happens to the industry in terms of tariff repair. And with tariff repair, CapEx to revenue will clearly drop further. You see most global telcos operated between 15% to 20%. There is no reason for Airtel not to operate at that level in the future.
Sure. Just on continuing on CapEx. So you crossed 300,000 sites now. Where do you stabilize? It looks like you're looking to add another 25,000 sites in like 5 circles, which you indicated?
It may not be all the way to bridge the gap because we have to watch very carefully. For us, the biggest thing that we focus on is are we delivering profitability at the site. We measure our profitability and our revenue and our cost in every single one of the 300,000 sites. So we have -- our performance is measured really on a site-by-site basis because ultimately, a site is a factory.
Users tend to show up in clusters of sites, so it's not on an island site, but in clusters of sites. So we have to make sure that the cluster is profitable before we go. Suffice to say that there will be a significant rollout that will happen in these 5 circles. How many it is? I don't know. We're still doing the work. But clearly, there's a gap here, which we'll need to bridge.
Just 1 last question, if I can, which is on 2G. What is the outlook? Jio seems to have urged government to shut down 2G network, how practical is that? And when do you expect 2G to be shut down?
Well, I think it's -- I mean, let me just unpack this a little bit. There are different kinds of users on -- with the 2G device. There are users who are illiterate who don't want a smartphone. There are users who have a very low income. There are older people who struggle to use smartphones. So it's a combination of various things.
The 2G contribution to our business now has become quite small, and it's in the ballpark of 17-odd percent. And in markets like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, Mumbai, Delhi, they are in single digits. But you still see a reasonably higher contribution in markets like Bihar, UP, MP, Chhattisgarh, et cetera, et cetera.
So I would say that you'll see -- you're seeing every quarter a move towards 2G, but there will be a small set of users who will take a little bit longer. My sense is that in the next few years, we should start seeing substantial, almost disappearing of 2G. And at that stage, we can decide what we do.
At this point in time, the amount of spectrum that we use is very limited for 2G. It's used dynamically along with the 4G networks. And there's only software because it's the same radios that are multi-technology that radiate all technologies.
The next question comes from Mr. Aditya Suresh.
Sir, 2 questions. First is in terms of tariffs. Now, obviously, you've articulated the various levers for the tariff improvement driven by mix. I guess my question was more specific in that all else equal and assuming there is no industry tariff actions over the next, say, 12 months, right, would you be able to kind of comment on how much more upside you could see on tariff just on the mix impacts?
Well, you've seen our track record over the last few years. We have seen improvement in ARPU in the absence of tariff hikes. Yes, in some quarters, it's a little higher. Some quarters, it's lower. But I wouldn't read too much into 1 particular quarter. If you just take a slightly longer timeframe, there is clearly a movement up in terms of average revenue per user on an organic basis given the levers that I spoke about, feature phone for smartphone, postpaid, data monetization, international roaming, shifting to higher price plans, et cetera, et cetera.
But this will be a modest improvement. The real improvement will come only if there is tariff repair. And as I mentioned before, it's not a question of when tariff repair will happen. It's more a question of -- sorry, it's not a question of if it will happen, it's more a question of when it will happen.
Right. Then just sticking with the CapEx question, which was asked previously, I appreciate that you've given us a guide here on a 3-year kind of CapEx targets, et cetera. You've spoken about how next year, we'll see a moderation. In relation, are you able to speak about any net debt-to-EBITDA targets which you may have over the next, say, 12 months or 24 months?
I think what you should see is a continuous deleveraging for the business because this business still has headroom to grow. And I'm saying even discounting for tariff increases, even discounting for that, there's a headroom for growth. The broadband business is growing rapidly. The B2B business, the domestic segment is growing rapidly. Mobility itself, there is upside for growth. So yes, in a business like ours, you get operating leverage. And we would be disappointed with ourselves if we don't hold to modestly keep improving margins as we get incremental revenue. And that will obviously go down to deleveraging and improve our net debt-to-EBITDA ratios.
The next question comes from Mr. Vivekanand Subbaraman.
I'm Vivekanand Subbaraman from AMBIT. My 2 questions, the first one being your comments, Gopal, on the platform solutions. Could you elaborate a bit on what exactly are you looking to replicate in Africa that has worked very well for you in India? And any initial thoughts on how you can take some of these solutions to other operators globally? That's one.
The second thing is a framework on CapEx with respect to the mix of CapEx across the businesses. In prior analyst interactions you have indicated how your nonmobile businesses have seen improvement in revenue contribution over time. And we are seeing that CapEx also seems to be somewhat lumpy in some of these businesses because of data center fiber rollouts. Could you give us a sense of what proportion of incremental CapEx will go to some of these businesses, and conversely, revenue contribution?
So let me take the answer to the second question first. I think, as I mentioned, the CapEx is a function of -- so radio CapEx in itself is a large CapEx, and that is going through a big rollout as we speak. And that's the one that I mentioned will have an elevated year of CapEx in this year, which is '23-'24 and see moderation.
Transport CapEx is less lumpy in that sense because it is -- we work on a blueprint, so we've got a 3-year blueprint for transport as we speak. And this requires a combination of laying fiber, which has higher gestation to lay the electronics component on lighting up these fiber and all of that, which is a sustained level of CapEx that we see. And this, I would say, if you look at most global telcos, you will find that as you move more and more towards the data world, you do see this on a sustained basis.
The core itself is a small part of the CapEx that's -- while it contains a lot of the intelligence, generally from a CapEx standpoint, that's a low contribution to the overall CapEx. Then, there is the non-wireless portfolio. Within this, we've got home broadband, where we have a big rollout that is currently happening, almost 1.5 million home passes per quarter. And the CapEx here is the cost of the home pass.
In addition, there are costs of routers that you light up as you get those homes, and we treat that as CapEx. So that's the second part. The same applies for DTH. B2B is a third part of the CapEx. This is where it's a bit lumpy. So if there are some cables that are being invested in, there are some data centers that are being built as we speak or some land that's being purchased for data centers, this is where it tends to get a little lumpy.
But the overall contribution of non-mobility has been consistent. It's just that in a year where radio CapEx is much higher, it doesn't mean that non-mobility also goes up. So in absolute terms, non-mobility, with the exception of data centers, which is a bolt-on, has been reasonably steady.
The second question that you had was on the platforms. The way we think about it -- so let me kind of pull back a little bit. We used to -- in the past, we used to operate our digital products in a product organization. And one of the challenges in a product organization is that -- or one of the advantages is that it gives you a lot of speed and agility, but a disadvantage is that you end up having a lot of efficiency. So you get the illusion of speed, but actually, you lose velocity, simply because you're rewriting the code again and again for each line of business.
So about 1.5 years ago or 1.5 years to 2 years ago, we said we are going to disband the product organization and really move to what we call a platform organization. And we have to spend a lot of time trying to really understand what are the platforms that we were trying to build. And this is what led us back to how customers deal with us. A customer deals with us to either buy something, we bill it, they pay for it, and we serve them. All of this, if you think about customers, whether it -- a customer is not online or offline, the customer is omnichannel.
So the customer is on the Web or the app or the call center or the store, and he or she wants to be seen as one across all of those channels. And all of this needs a data mesh or a data infrastructure below. So we spent the last 6, 7 years, actually building a strong data infrastructure. Omnichannel is the way customers deal with us, and what we're focused on is actually building these platforms.
But what we've done is the way we built it. If you've built it in a modular manner so that it is -- it just needs administrative rights for any business to use it. It's not necessarily linked to our business alone. It's built in a more abstracted form. And it has over -- it has several APIs, which come from the underlying billings stacks. And so we've not changed any of the billing stacks because if you change billing stacks, it becomes very complicated.
Now if you look at most telcos and most businesses struggle with this because they've got this complexity, they haven't abstracted out the platforms, and therefore, are not able to deliver a truly omnichannel experience. And that is the opportunity we feel that can be extended. We are ready with 2 platforms that we can take straight away, which we're going to lift and shift into Africa.
One part is the way any of these show up in the channels, which is omnichannel. The other part is, again, on the serv side, all the fleet that is actually -- 70,000 people in our company today work off Airtel Work. Anything that happens in the company, whether it's installation, fault repair, a network maintenance in a site or indeed a SIM that has to be delivered to the house, works off Airtel Work. That's another platform that as part of the serv platform that can also be extended.
So I think we are now at least well on our way here, and to lift and shift this is literally a few months. It's not many years, which is what most companies would then tend to do. So this is something that we are keen to test waters. We're going to start with a few countries in Africa to start with, and then, we will progressively look to see how we can extend this.
Gopal, your answers, as usual, are very, very informative. Just 1 follow-up. Have you had any conversations, business development conversations with any external telco to provide some of these plug-and-play solutions?
It's a bit premature, Vivekanand, to answer that question. I wouldn't want to answer it right now because the proof of the pudding is finally in the eating. So at this point, it's what I've mentioned. We're having a number of conversations. But at this point, I will not report anything unless we see action.
The next question comes from Mr. Piyush Choudhary.
This is Piyush from HSBC. Congrats on a great set of numbers. 2 questions. Firstly, on 5G, could you update how many subs have 5G handsets now on your network? How is the pace gathering? And when do you expect to launch commercial 5G packages and start monetizing that 5G data traffic?
Secondly, with rising free cash flow, and it could improve further with tapering down of CapEx, can you share your thoughts on dividend outlook? And how is -- how are you thinking about framing a sustainable dividend policy?
So 5G, we have about 65 million users on our network today, and this is growing. The total contribution of 5G users to overall smartphone is still in the -- is still lower. It's about 15% to 16%. We expect that by March '25, the industry will see about 25% of smartphones, which are 5G-enabled.
And if you look at shipments coming into India, about 70% to 80% -- no, 60% to 80%, depending on the price point on an average, are 5G-enabled devices of new devices that are coming in.
On the free cash flow, I think we've, again, mentioned this before. The first port of call is to deleverage. We need to reach a point of comfort on that. And then, of course, at some stage, this company will look to pay dividend. We haven't framed a dividend policy as of yet.
Just on the first point, when do we expect to start monetizing the 5G traffic? Like what's the timeline you're looking at?
Yes, I apologize. Well, unfortunately, 5G has become really about free data today in India. So there is no real monetization on the consumer side. Yes, fixed wireless access will give you some ability to monetize, but it's really modest in the overall scheme of things given the CapEx that's gone behind 5G.
There's also private 5G networks for enterprises. We are working with a large auto ancillary manufacturer in the South. We've got a big handset player in the South of India. So we -- and we've got a big player in the West in industrial equipment that we're also working with.
So some of these companies are looking to deploy private 5G networks. We have indeed have deployed about 4 or 5 of such projects. But again, you will appreciate that this is a smaller part of the overall monetization. So when you look at monetization, this is not meaningful in any sense -- stretch, any sense of the term. I do not believe at the same time that 5G should have differential pricing. Because, as I've said this before, if you have 100 users and you -- this is just simple consumer behavior, you have 100 users you offer something to, and you offer something to them at a slightly higher price.
So if you've got a price of X and X plus 5% or 10% higher, then the percentage of users who will take that higher price will invariably be less than 10%, which means you don't really get monetization because you don't really get revenue since you're getting a fraction of those users. So I think monetization is about overall tariff repair, but I -- free data on 5G is obviously a headwind on any sort of monetization as far as 5G is concerned.
Right. And just on that dividend, I appreciate that -- first cash use will be deleveraging. What is the level of India net debt to EBITDA where you will be comfortable in then framing us dividend policy?
Harjeet, do you want to take that?
Yes. Sure, Gopal. Thanks. So I think Gopal, Piyush, also earlier mentioned to your question and to the earlier one that clearly in the near few quarters the focus continues to be deleveraging. If you see the consolidated leverage, this is about 2.5 right now, India has now come down to below 3. Historically, we've maintained -- closer to 2 is nearly a good comfort target. We are still away from that.
Ideally, both the business units should have that. Africa, as you know, is much less than 1.5. It's probably 1.35 today. So I would say next 4 to 6 quarters more to sort of zero in on that, cash flow should hopefully go to drive that. And then target what exactly is a good comfortable level, knowing very well 3 things. Number one, bulk of this debt is in India.
Number two, within India, bulk of the debt is AGR/DoT, roughly about 50% to 55% of the Indian debt is that. And number 3 is 30-odd percent is finance lease obligations. So focusing on really the true external debt as a risk parameter and then formulate something. So in the shorter term, look towards reaching closer to 2 consolidated, closer to 2.5 or below for India, use cash flows to delever and then formulate the next strategy.
The next question comes from Mr. Ankur Rudra.
This is Ankur from JPMorgan. So just maybe the first question. Gopal, we've seen very impressive cash conversion, helped partially by very nicely maintained CapEx. I just wanted to understand the CapEx for the last 2 or 3 quarters. We've seen the headline tower and the broadband base station rollouts remaining elevated and almost consistent for the last 3 quarters, but the CapEx sort of dropped since 1Q. Could you maybe help us understand what drove the decline and clearly not BTS or tower-led?
Second is, if you can elaborate on the cash -- sorry, capital allocation side, you highlighted how you will think about dividends. But also if you could clarify are the plans for the uncalled for amount on the rights issue, given it's probably callable over the course of this year?
And number three, if you could give us a sense of -- you mentioned handset penetration should rise to 25% in a year's time, how should we think about in the medium term the timing of incremental rollouts for, a, network densification in urban and metro areas as that 25% to 30% happens; b, expanding to other areas in your modular approach; and c, from a long-term perspective, how far is the glide path towards SA from NSA on a multiyear basis?
Okay. Thanks, Ankur. Many, many questions there. On cash convergence, I think we've -- I guess because it's a high operating leverage business and our overall bet on NSA has worked very well, delivering better experience, lower cost, and of course, our War on Waste program, coupled with revenue growth, has really led to that.
Just in terms of capital allocation, we don't have any real need to call for the rights at this point in time. So we'll keep a watch. But at this point in time, there is really no need for calling for the rights.
On the -- on your densification question, well, India, historically, if you look at our cities, they are actually amongst the most densified cities. So if you compare India -- Indian cities with most other cities around the world, you will find India actually has much higher density of sites, and that is on account of, a, the population density, but also on account of historically limited amount of spectrum. And therefore, there has been a densification because the only way you can get more capacity is either by more spectrum or by repeating the spectrum in shorter loops.
We believe that the increased densification in metros on -- overall in terms of towers, yes, there will be some opportunity to put up some sites as cities expand. So for example, if you look at Delhi NCR, it's expanding rapidly. So as you get to the periphery, there will be opportunities to put on some sites. But within the core city other than in some very, very dense areas, where we may have had coverage gaps in the past, generally, the need for densification is low. This is at a broad level.
5G, given the fact that we are operating on NSA, in any case, is using mid-band for the uplink and using 3.5 for the downlink, where, as I mentioned, about 4, 5 quarters ago, you get almost 100 meters extra propagation. So you don't need any more densification for 5G coverage. And it is empty network at this point in time. We've got lots of spectrum. So for the conceivable future, I don't see any opportunity to densify.
At some stage, we will definitely move from NSA to SA. We're already experimenting with SA. So for example, the launch of our fixed wireless access network will be on SA because we believe that the experience on just -- on a device that doesn't move will lend itself to good SA. And remember, SA and NSA can work -- can be together. I mean, they can work together. So in some factories, in plants, we may actually deploy SA. This is in the short term.
But in the more medium term as more and more traffic shifts from 4G networks to 5G networks, as more and more devices come in, we will take our existing spectrum bands, reform it to 5G and then move to an all SA network. We're already in the midst of a trial in 1 town in the North, where about 30 sites to -- on an all SA network just in order to learn and see some of the challenges. There are some issues that need to be dealt with.
But I would say over the next few years, you will start seeing a gradual move from NSA to SA. And over a period of time, you will see more and more of that 4G spectrum being reformed for 5G. So that's really the roadmap that -- you just don't need to do it ahead of time. You just have to follow where our traffic is and keep moving there.
In terms of experience, as we've seen now and it's been proven, I remember there were a lot of questions in earlier quarters on SA versus NSA. There is -- actually, NSA, we are delivering a better experience, and you can see that in all the awards that we won.
Just 1 clarification, Gopal, if I may. On the first question, basically, I was asking that the CapEx has dropped from 1Q to 2Q and 3Q, which has been sort of stable, despite the fact that headline towers and base station additions continue to be elevated. So could you highlight where that CapEx was in the 1Q which hasn't repeated because we thought that pace will determine what the CapEx is?
I wouldn't read too much into it. I mean if -- Soumen can have a better answer to this. But I would imagine that actually, there was a lot more 5G deployments in first quarter, which lowered. Some of it was also on account of materials and so on and so forth. It will all catch up. So the guidance that we've given on an elevated level of CapEx for this year stays. So I would say that that's really the only difference.
Soumen, I don't know if you want to add anything.
Yes. I think there was a lot of inholding of 5G radios which happened. And typically, Q2, there is a problem of deployment, which is why while some of those radios was deployed, it was lesser. It has got picked up in Q3. So don't look at the quarterly movements and try to annualize it for the full year. Look at it widely, that should give you a picture.
[Operator Instructions] With this, I would now like to hand over the proceedings to Mr. Gopal Vittal for his closing remarks.
I want to thank you all for having joined this earnings call, and thank you for all your questions. I look forward to speaking with you soon in the next quarter.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. The recording of this webinar will also be available on our website for your reference. Have a good day ahead.