Bharti Airtel stock among top Sensex losers after telco adds lowest subscribers in June

The Bharti Airtel stock fell in early trade after the telco logged the lowest subscriber addition for the month of June. Market leader Bharti Airtel added a paltry 10,689 customers in June, the least among its peers. Bharti Airtel had added nearly 36 million customers in May following the integration of its recently acquired Telenor India operation with itself.  Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio led the subscriber addition tally by gaining 9.71 million subscribers in June followed by Idea Cellular, which added 6.36 million customers.

Kumar Mangalam Birla-led Idea Cellular had lost 2.53 million users in May.

Vodafone India added 275219 subscribers in the reporting month. Bharti Airtel still remains the top operator with 30.05 per cent market share followed by Vodafone (19.43%) and Idea Cellular (19.24%).

Jio has gained market share of 18.78 per cent at the end of June.

State-run BSNL too added 244,485 subscribers in June. MTNL though lost 9,615 subscribers in the reported period.  The overall wireless subscriber base rose to 1.14 billion at the end of June.

The stock fell to 363.05 level intra day, seven points lower than its previous close of 370.40 on the BSE. At 10:32 am, the stock was trading 0.74% or 3 points lower at 367 level.

The stock has been losing for the last three days and has fallen 1.10% during the same period. It has lost 12.26% during the last one year and 30.55% since the beginning of this year.

23 of 30 brokerages rate the stock "buy" or 'outperform', four "hold" and three "underperform" or "sell", according to Reuters.

For the quarter ended June 2018, the telco reported reported a 73.5 per cent fall in net income at Rs 97 crore for the three months to June due to intense competition in the mobile services market. The company had registered a net profit of Rs 367 crore in the same period a year ago.