Investor Update

Aug 30, 2021

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on this investor call. As you're aware, the Board of Directors of Bharti Airtel approved a fund raise of up to INR 21,000 crores in its Board meeting yet. In order to discuss this further, I have with me on this call our Chairman, Mr. Suneel Bharti Mittal MD and CEO, India South Asia, Mr. Gopal Vittar Group Director, Strategy and Business Development, Harjeep Kohli and CFO, India South Asia, Badal Bagri. Before I hand over the call to our Chairman for his opening remarks, I wanted to highlight that we will be opening up this call for a question and answer session. Participants who wish to ask a question can send in their questions using the moderator chat option on the BlueJeans interface. With this, I hand over the call to our Chairman, Mr. Suneel Haitham Mittal for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir. Thank you, Komal. A very warm welcome to all the attendees on this call, our investors and other watchers from the public markets, media. I am joining an investor call like this after long years. And I think today's call was more appropriate for me to begin with. And I am assisted by Gopal, Harjeet and Vazil and of course, Komal, who handles our Investor Relations. And we'll be here for the next 1 hour to talk about some of the issues that face the industry, in particular what's happening at Airtel. But let me begin by talking about our industry and the announcement that we made yesterday. India is truly moving into the digital world on a very accelerated basis. The phase that we have entered now cannot be described anything short of being exponential. More and more people are joining the bandwagon of being on the digital services. Millions and millions of phones are going into the hands of Indians. These are powerful computing devices capable of doing a lot more than we ever saw before. Digital India is just not a dream anymore, it's a reality. Government services are moving through digital medium, businesses are moving through digital medium, monies are moving through digital medium, health care services, education, any and every touch point of our economy or public services are now relying more and more on the digital medium. To a point that the need for our digital infrastructure is growing exponentially in the country. Rate of adoption, in fact, is something that has surprised all of us. Even at the lower end of the pyramid, people in the rural areas, people on the fringes of society are all joining the mainstream of being on the digital media. The last 18 months of pandemic in fact has accelerated this particular aspect. And I would like to take a lot of credit as our industry jointly by all the players who are here that we truly stepped up our efforts and work to ensure that India remained connected. People who moved into their homes, the traffic that moved with them to their homes was well managed. And I think we can all, and you can agree with me, complement the huge effort put in by the teams of all the telecom companies to ensure that India remain connected during this very difficult and trying times, not just for us as individuals, but even for companies at large. I think India has done very well by rolling out extensive 4 gs network across the country. Today, India is in step with the globe in terms of ensuring that the citizens enjoy a very high quality broadband services based in 4 gs. In fact, the 4 gs rollout has been exponential in this country in the last 3 or 4 years, almost every corner of the country is now ably covered by the 4 gs. Efforts made by all companies in this regard are lauded. I would say, in particular, Airtel has been able to see this trend coming right from 2012 when we became India's 1st company to launch 4 gs services in Calcutta and thereafter stepped up on our rollout of the services to ensure that we remained relevant, valid and a leading player in providing mobile broadband services. This 15th August, our Honorable Prime Minister made a very strong appeal to the industry at large. He asked us to take more risks. He asked us to put more capital. He indeed exhorted the industry and industry players to show their animal spirits and go and grow the country's infrastructure to ensure that Indians can benefit from the futuristic networks that we cannot roll out. Prime Minister's pillar of Digital India has been an article of faith with us at Airtel. We believe that the call could not have been more timely by the Prime Minister. And today, when we have taken the step to make a significant announcement of capital investment, which I'll explain in a little while. It responds to his call to the industry at large to put in more manufacturing facilities, to put in more money into health care services, to go and do more biosciences, to do more research and activities, more importantly, ensure that all this is enabled to a very strong medium of digital India, a vision that he holds very dearly. With all this in mind, it was time for us at Airtel to respond. Yesterday in the Board meeting, on a unanimous basis, including our esteemed partner Singtel, we all came to the conclusion that the company needs to raise more capital. Yes, indeed, this has been in a flurry of round of capital increases in the company, but you all know that companies who have not been able to raise capital in time have suffered and importantly have not been able to partake the benefits of a growing economy that we all seek. The capital that we have decided to raise is known to you as INR 21,000 crores, which will be by way of our rights issue. The details are already with you from our release of yesterday. Why are we raising this amount of money? Some questions have been asked. Some queries have been posed. The reason for this is very simple. You have expressed from time to time the leverage in our company to be something that bothers you. It bothers us as well. We have been loaded by extraordinary debt, which you could have not imagined just 2 years back, even 1 year back perhaps, the load of AGR, the load of Spectrum payments have indeed created an extraordinary load of debt on the company. While we remain very comfortable and Gopal has talked about it in the past, I think we are comfortable for business as usual. We will be fine in rolling out more 4 gs networks. We'll perhaps even be finally rolling out part of our 5 gs networks in substitution to the 4 gs network. But we believe there's an opportunity to really accelerate our growth path now. And for that, we wanted to lower our debt leverage, improve our debt leverage and therefore have access to capital as and when we need for the growth capital that we require. What are the growth triggers that we see imminently in front of us? 5 gs is upon us now. I have been saying it for the last 3 or 4 years that H222 will be the time when 5 gs will start to become a reality in our country, slowly in the key cities and then going into 'twenty three, 'twenty four into the rest of the country across the length and breadth of our current network. And it seems to me that we are really coming close to that prediction now. The auction of spectrum is likely to happen sometime early next year. And by H2 next year, which is H2 20 2, 2023, we will start to see 5 gs services coming in East Cities of India. The other aspect for any new technology or services is the device ecosystem. And I'm very glad to inform all of you that, that particular area is looking very good. 15% of devices are 5 gs enabled. And by the time we get into H2 next year, a very large amount of smartphones will truly be 5 gs enabled. Another heartening feature is that the price points for 5 gs devices are coming down. And I know once you get used to a 5 gs speeds and 5 gs throughput capacities, customers will start to lap those services more and more. It's also India's cherished desire to see 5 gs coming in fast. We do, of course, hope that the pricing on spectrum will be equally made attractive by the government to ensure India benefits from our robust 5 gs ecosystem. In addition to 5 gs, I think we need to roll out more fiber, more than what we have done in the past. We need to prepare our networks for backhauling 5 gs type of capacities. While we have done a lot of fiber rollout, a lot more needs to be done. And as we do that, we will also do millions of new home passes for FTTH broadband services into homes and of course offices. This has picked up a lot of momentum in the last 12 months. We are seeing more and more people joining Airtel's broadband network. If you have seen our last quarter announcement as well, the number of fixed broadband connections are now truly rising exponentially. We cannot let that opportunity be missed out by Airtel, which has been in a leading position other than BSNL to serve India's connected needs into homes and offices. That will require capital as well. In the last 1 year, we are seeing accelerated demand by hyperscalers on Airtel to set up data centers. This is one place where Airtel has the right to win. We not only know how to build data centers, we have the domain knowledge to operate them more efficiently than anybody else in the country. We have submarine cable assets. We were the pioneers in submarine cable, India's 1st submarine cable going from Chennai to Singapore was done by Airtel. And since then, we have now got participation and ownership in multiple other submarine cables, which is the heartbeat for any data center. And of course, we have ton of fiber on ground to ensure resiliency of our data centers. We believe we have a significantly higher chance of winning this space and attracting hyperscalers as compared to pure play real estate players. So that will require investments as well. So the clear position in front of us was business as usual for which we believe we are well funded, I think you also believe that or now go and accelerate on our growth path. What are we seeing in the marketplace? More and more customers are choosing Airtel. Airtel is becoming a place of choice. The brand is resilient. We are in a lifetime high of mobile revenue market share. We are getting more and more broadband customers onto us. In the enterprise space, which I have not spoken because it takes much lesser capital, the large corporates, the midsized companies, MSMEs are all knocking at our doors to connect them to provide them solutions, and we are also accelerating that path as well. To my mind, there would have never been a better time for us to press on the gas, put more capital into the system and ensure that we take disproportionate gains out of the market as India grows and adopts more and more digital services. It would be a grave error of duty on our part if this was a time when we stayed with business as usual. I can share with you, I have never felt more confident and I've never felt more comfortable in saying, I can see Airtel taking a very special place in India's corporate pantheon of companies. I believe we can press on the gas now and move forward to take more market share in mobile services, significantly higher share in FTTH business, step up on enterprise and global businesses and importantly also back it up with strong data center business. I'm glad that some of the pain we took earlier is paying dividends today and will hold us for the future. We have the largest spectrum pool in the country. We bought a lot of spectrum in the past which is all today helping us in serving our customers, very importantly, has become the bedrock for us to serve the customers for many, many more years to come without spending more money on spectrum. There may be marginal renewals coming up in 'twenty three, 'twenty four, but they are very small and modest. So other than the 5 gs spectrum, which we will hopefully secure at a reasonable price in the coming year, we are pretty much done on spectrum, which as you know is not only a lifeline for us, but also a very heavy capital commitment that goes into it. As we respond to the government's call to invest more money, accelerate the digital vision of India, we equally expect the government also to respond by having lighter touch regulations, by making life simple for telecom companies, INR 35 of every INR 100 that the telecom revenues generate as revenues go into government levies. The levies are far too high. If India has to be truly a place where the citizen enjoy digital services, their government gets ton of revenue because of digital vision, it's important that the levies and the load on our industry needs to be brought down. Lastly, yes, this industry needs to have the right economic model. For far too long, we have played in this game by growing the industry at very minimal pricing level. People are consuming 16 gigabytes of data average per user per month. It's time that the tariffs do tick up to make this industry viable and more importantly, having the decent and appropriate returns on capital to grow into more technology arenas, to roll out more networks and become a much more viable model of sustainability in the future. In closing, let me say, we have been and we always will be very responsible. We continuously watch our expenses. We continuously watch our CapEx. We put reasonable CapEx that we can see ahead on the runway. We will not invest 10 years out, but we will never be short that in the next 1 or 2 years growth that comes through is not captured by Yattell. I can assure all of you that this money will be well spent, spent in the areas that I've described to you, and we are committed to partake the gains that this country offers to a handful of players in the marketplace. In my opinion, this is once in a lifetime opportunity and the time for that to invest more, to accelerate is here and now. Thank you. Thank you, sir. The first question is from Kunal Voda of BNP Paribas. He wants to know that in the recent earnings call, the management had indicated that leverage level is comfortable. Is there any change in our thought process? And why are we looking at equity rather than monetizing some of the assets we hold? Well, the first part is, I think, very well answered by me. Business as usual does not require anything. I think we have sensed an opportunity for which we need to accelerate. Could we manage to raise more debt? I have to be honest, we can. There is a lot of goodwill in the marketplace. Our lines from the banks are very low. We can draw more money from the banks. We are getting great responses from the bond markets as well. But as you have pointed to us repeatedly, as also our rating agencies, they are the right balance to be achieved between more debt and some equity. In my own opinion, therefore, this new equity is not a change in game plan. This is not a change of heart. This is the need of the hour. This is need for the company to accelerate beyond business as usual. As to the second part, I think we remain committed to monetization, but monetization at appropriate time, on appropriate terms. We have a very large shareholding in our tower company in this at nearly 42%. That's an asset which is not core to the heart of Airtel, but equally, it's a very important asset which we don't take lightly. We have ton of fiber. There are moves that we have seen across globally and here in India where fiber have been monetized, but in the right and appropriate way. I can show you that these assets are on our radar to be monetized at an appropriate time. We are not giving you a different signal today by saying we will not monetize them, but we will not monetize them at any cost. We will do it at the right time, at the right valuation, in the right structure. Thank you. So the next question is around the promoter stake. The promoter stake in Airtel has declined over the last few years. While the rights issue will obviously not result in any reduction, but how are you thinking about the long term stake of promoters into Airtel? Well, you have to really see it from a promoter group as 1 rather than seeing a separate promoter groups. At 56% promoter holding in this company, I would say this is a fairly large earholding for the size of the company that we are in. Bharati Telecom, which is the premier promoter group company in itself holds about 36%, which in itself is a very large block. Then there are blocks held directly by Bharti entities and Singtel entities outside that. So I would say we are at a comfortable level at 56%. If your specific question is about Bharti Enterprises stake, I think we see Bharti Telecom as a key subsidiary of the group, which holds 36%, plus another 6% 6% plus held by other group companies. But 42%, we remain a very comfortable shareholding level. And honestly, we don't see any reason for market to be alarmed about it. But you also should know that no promoter goes down in shareholding by choice. This industry has seen hell for the last 4, 5 years. 8, 9 operators have disappeared. A very strong combined operator today is struggling. In the face of that, I think you will give us credit that we did dilution or raising more capital in good time rather than chasing capital when none would have been available. We were timely. We did the right things. We did not bother about the stock price at different levels. We raised capital, and the outcome has been very clear. We are today standing very tall because of the large amounts of money that we have raised. If that has resulted in some drop of our peer holding, we are fine with that. Thank you, sir. The next set of questions are from Sanjay Jain of ICICI Securities. The first question is that Bharti had recently added 5 percent equity stake in Indus Towers. So therefore, does the company plan to further increase stake in Tower Company with the rights issue? The second question is on OneWeb. What are your thoughts on the satellite business? And would Bharti et al also be investing in OneWeb in the future? Well, both points, I mean, Indus, I did cover in my earlier remarks. But as far as Indus is concerned, it's a very strategic asset. A life of a telecom company is in the hands of a tower company. You cannot have a situation where you have a weak tower company and then you are struggling to run your networks appropriately. We have seen in the past there were weak operators, GTL and 1 or 2 others, where the operators riding on these networks suffered immensely. Airtel cannot afford that. And we ran InsoTel as a 100% controlled company and it was listed as you know. Then we had a lower stake in the same. In Indus, we had a 42% stake. After the merger, our stake was at a level where we were less comfortable in having greater influence on it. Our 5% stake was bought last year. And all I can tell you is the money that we have planned to raise from the rights issue, there is no allocation towards buying in the stake. But would we desire to have greater influence in the Indus at some point in time in the future? The answer is a definite yes. But it will be done at the appropriate time. It will be done only with a purpose, strategic purpose. And importantly, as I said, this is a monetizable asset. And I can tell you if you have to monetize it tomorrow, you will be significantly better served by handing over influence to somebody else rather than giving them a weak shareholding in their hands. So let's watch this space. There is no hurry on this. But last year's 5% has given us an extra board seat, which has increased our influence in Indus. We look at it in a much stronger way and we feel much more comfortable that Airtel today is in safe hands when its towers are radiating on the basis of what Indus has created. On the OneWeb, I think this question keeps on coming occasionally. Airtel has no investment into OneWeb Global. The entire investment into OneWeb from Bharti is from Bharti Enterprises with no correlation with Airtel. And as far as Airtel is concerned, it will be a partner of choice for OneWeb in India. And the total investment in India of OneWeb in setting up ground stations will be circa $30,000,000 $40,000,000 So let's say about INR 253,000, INR 300 crores of which Airtel OneWeb Global will be taking some debt. Airtel's equity participation in Indian joint venture could be in the order of magnitude of $5,000,000 $7,000,000 So we are talking about 30, 40, 50 crores of investment in OneWeb for India segment only. So I must make this very clear, there are no plans for Airtel to buy my stake from Bharti Enterprises or invest into OneWeb Global. We are talking about very tiny amounts for Airtel to be the custodian of OneWeb on the Indian and South Asian market. Sir, the next set of questions are on the balance sheet. India Inc, in general, has been talking about reducing leverage. And what is the view of Bharti Airtel's promoter on deleveraging the Airtel balance sheet? And what is the steady state net debt to EBITDA target, if you can share it for the company? And a related question is for the FCA generation opportunities going forward into next year, how are we thinking about it? Would we delever the balance sheet or would we invest it back into something related? Well, we are very pure play telecom company. We have never deviated. We don't do other industries from Airtel. All those are done painstakingly by our family entities, our Bharti entities. We have never mixed and matched. We don't do real estate from here. We don't do manufacturing from here. We don't do other stuff from here. This is a pure play telecom company. This was a commitment to our shareholders back in 25 years back when we started and we have kept absolutely pure to it. There are some adjacencies which keep on knocking at our doors, we evaluate them. Most of the time we have rejected it. If something comes up, which is digital in its nature and core to our business, in future we could look at that, but they have to be very, very low capital intensity opportunities. Our large capital intensity or 95% of it has to be in the telecommunications arena. So I would say, and as far as our deleveraging strategy is concerned, if you ask me personally what's my comfort level, my comfort level is debt to OIBDA ratio of 2. Can we get there? My own view is by and by we should get there. We have, as I said, very large monetizable assets. We have a huge equity in Africa. We have a huge equity sitting here in Infotel, IndusNow and we have a huge fiber assets that have not been in cash at all, 100% sitting with Airtel. There are of course very large real estate assets at some point in time, they could become opportunities as well. And I also believe that the cash flow from this industry are bound to increase. If this industry has to be sustainable, you will start to see an early tick up of tariffs and ARPUs going into the next several months. So a combination of monetization on one hand and improved financials on the other could start to see in the next few years and I'm talking about 10 years, I'm talking about just 2, 3 years, AerCell becoming much, much more comfortable in its debt profile. Thank you, sir. The next set of questions are around our CapEx trajectory. Would today's narrative around 5 gs and accelerated CapEx meaningfully change our CapEx trajectory? And in the instance that the Indian market goes to a duplex, could there be a meaningful change in our CapEx? Well, I would say we have done significant CapEx. I mean, we have not shied away from CapEx. We know our telecom companies who have pulled their hand on CapEx have suffered heavily. And this is something we have known for 20 years and therefore always we have been ahead of the CapEx game. My own view is that we will continue to roll out CapEx that is required. I also personally feel that as we go forward, the consumption of a user per customer user is not going to exponentially grow from 16 gigabytes which is already a global record, by the way. So we believe there's enough capacity that has been created to now generate rewards back for us. In the event there was a a situation where more customers were to suddenly to come into Airtel fold, I think we are in a good shape to carry them through our fiber mobile networks And I don't see therefore any reason for us to be worried about. But yes, this 21,000 crores gives us exactly that leverage that we need, The fuel to grow that extra mile that we can sense is around the corner. Right, sir. Related question is, as part of this larger investment that we are talking about, could we also see a change in our handset strategy? I want to toss this to Gopal. He was much more closer on to the handset side. So far, our company has been fortunate or the industry has been fortunate for, I would say, 25 years not to spend 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars of subsidies that the world does across their markets. India has escaped that. So far we have not been requiring to do it. But I'm sure Gopal has a clear strategy on that as well. Yes, I think we've spoken about this in previous earnings calls as well. Handsets subsidies by themselves are pretty much, I would say, a month's game, Because what happens is that when the handset comes for a renewal at the end of 2 years or 30 months, the customer makes the choice all over again to choose a network of his or her choice. And as a consequence to stay in the same place, you need to keep subsidizing again and again. And I think world over, it's now clear that handsets are really value destructive in that respect. Having said that, I think this is a competitive industry. We will look at what happens in the marketplace. So combination of good marketing optics, so combination of some capabilities, platforms around locks. We've experimented with lending options to actually provide some loans to our banking partners on a locked device. We've done some pilots with a few companies, some of the large manufacturers, OEM manufacturers. So we pretty much have clarity on how we deal with this. But the one thing I do want to underscore is that if you look at handsets as a market, unlike any other consumer market in India, the lowest price handset smartphones specifically between INR46000 strangely have actually the smallest market share of the total handset market in India. And that is simply because consumers spend 4 to 5 hours on their device and therefore when they operate, they're looking for a good quality device. As a consequence, I think we are going to watch the space. And then based on what happens competitively, we will take our Gopal, the next set of questions on ARPU. What do you believe is a long term ARPU trajectory for the Indian industry as a whole? And which player do you think will blink first in terms of taking up the tariff hikes this time around? Well, this has been my stated position for the last several years. We need to get to INR 200 very quickly. And I don't have a crystal ball in front of me, but if I have to say this industry needs to survive, this industry needs to thrive, we need to get to INR 200 within this financial year. I would say, we should aim to be at INR 200 by the time we end this financial year. Eventually, this industry needs to be at INR 300 per customer per month. And in that, you can enjoy a ton of data that Indians are used to music, entertainment, Netflix, Amazon, Prime, whatever is required should be available to our customers, financial services, banking, electronic banking, health services. So we will put in a lot more stuff, but we need to get to a 200 point and then eventually 300. The beauty of our industry is it's very granular, it's very segmented. For INR 100, a customer will be able to be on the network, have a small amount of snacking of data, and then you can have customers going up to INR 600, INR 800, INR 800, INR 800, INR 8 anywhere in the world. So I remain very confident that we have seen the worst now in terms of tariff wars. We have seen the worst in terms of ARPU contraction. Do remember that in 2016 September, at the launch of a new powerful competitors, we had all gone below INR 100. We are at about midpoint INR 145, INR 150 ish. This will start to trend towards INR 200 within this financial year. That's where my indication is. I would hasten to add that I have a strong confidence that the industry will get to 200 within the financial year. Thank you, sir. One set of questions from investors is around the timing of the rights issue. In general, we have seen that our stock price was doing very well. Our on ground execution has been strong. We have been gaining market share. So why did we choose to dilute now rather than waiting for the industry to consolidate even more and share price to reach 750,000 levels? Well, there's never the right time for anything. You can always in hindsight look at things. But imagine if you wouldn't have done our first rights issue, imagine we wouldn't have done our QIP and SCCB, Possibly, we wouldn't have had the right to do another rights issue. Our company could have been in doldrums. We could have been in serious difficulties. So rather than being too opportunistic, too greedy in terms of what pricing can come through, you have to do things at the right My biggest concern would be that you would have accused me and my team back to say, why didn't you wake up in time when you knew very clearly that such a large growth opportunity is staring at you? We can see it. And I'm not exaggerating here. We can see it and the time, as I said, is here and now. Any delay, you could have 1 or 2 months delay, I'm not talking about a delay of more fundraising to next year, could have been detrimental to the fortunes of this company. And I hope that we will be able to have a chat a year from now and you will be able to say this was the right decision. Right, Sathiya. The next set of questions are on our digital strategy. With recent restructuring, should we expect Bharti Airtel to be more aggressive in the digital side? And are we looking to monetize the digital side of the business? Could we have any strategic investment coming in either at the HL level or into the digital side of the business? Well, digital has been an area where we picked up momentum always slowly. I think more most companies which are coming from traditional backgrounds, even though they are in technology like Airtel, take a little bit of time to get going and many don't actually get going at all. We have never used narrative of digital to galvanize our story. We have been working in the trenches on our digital strategy. And I can tell you that I am today so pleased to share with you that Airtel truly is today a company which is digital in its core, digital in its services and importantly, the customers are feeling it, whether it's the advertising side of it, whether it's the HLSIQ, where it's touch points to our sales team, our entire sales management, distribution management, our networks internally being monitored on digital. But importantly, more and more enterprises picking up our digital services. Wink has got now a record number of customers using it, active customers. Airtel Payment Bank has got a record throughput of transactions and customers on its network. Airtel Thanks is a record breaking addition of customers using a variety of digital services. So today, I would say we are strongly a digital company. And in the coming quarters, you'll start to see us now talking a lot more about it and also trying to give you our revenues coming from the digital, which will start to get fairly impressive, I would say. Pure play digital revenues, which you know are all more or less flowing through the EBITDA line, are all coming through very, very strongly. And we have, again, a right to win there because the right platforms have been laid out. It has taken us 4 or 5 years to get there, but we are there now. In terms of will we monetize digital, I must mention here and I have heard this feedback from the market, why did you buy out 20% stake back in telemedia on the DTH? I think people get wiser in hindsight. All our customer facing units where we go to the customer needs to be in the complete control of 1 company and 1, which is Airtel. When you have a subsidiary, which has a different set of shareholders, however friendly and known to us like VovaGard, There are 2 boards, 2 separate companies related party transactions. You have seen the Airtel Black has been hugely well received in the marketplace, big success. We want to give all our services which are go to market, customer facing as one. The digital to my mind again is something we can't slice and dice. We need to keep it all under one company, which is Airtel, whereas infrastructure pieces like fiber and towers are very different. They are not my go to market assets. They can be sold off, they can be monetized, they can be part monetized or wholly monetized, but the company which faces a customer must remain 1. So if you will see ever any alliances, any tie ups, any equities being given to some strategic key investors from the globe, they'll be only at Bharti Airtel and not in bits and pieces downstairs. Sir, some investors are actually moving back to the tariff narrative we just discussed and people want to know that why doesn't Airtel take the lead in raising tariffs in the industry? Well, in a limited way, we have been doing it. We moved first to INR 49 as a minimum click in charge, then we have taken it recently to INR 79 on an all India basis. And the good news is that it's been very well received in the marketplace. Can this go to 99% eventually? My answer would be an emphatic yes. The question is when. In the end, we are also bound by the market forces. We can't be an outlier beyond a point. You can be having some premium given your strength of brand and the attractiveness of you to the customers, but you can't go beyond a point where you start to hurt yourself. We will be vigilant, but we will be happy to take small baby steps, which could even be first and foremost compared to others. So I can assure you that we will not shy away from doing it. And these INR 79 and some postpaid plans which have been taken up are a testimony that we have run out of patients and we have taken the first book. Right, sir. The next set of questions are on Ethyl Africa. How do you think about Ethyl Africa over the longer term or the medium term horizon? And could Airtel actually look to exit the asset at some point of time in the future if we felt that the India opportunity in itself was very compelling? Well, Africa is now done. If you had to wind back the clock that money could have been put into India, the answer could be toss-up could be both ways. Africa looked very attractive and we went in there. It's taken us much, much longer than we were originally thought in creating a success. It's been 10 years now. We are in our 11th year there. But the last 4 years have been delightful. What a turnaround story this has been, and this is a true Bharatiya till DNA where we don't easily give up. Today, that company is outstripping the competitors in terms of growth rates in every market that we operate. It's a solidly EBITDA positive company. It's a dividend paying company and a regular dividend paying company. And we also have a very clear dividend strategy there. And the stock price has also rallied up in the last year, year and a half. It's an asset which doesn't load Airtel India. It's an independent asset, independent board. It's a FTSE250 company listed on the London Stock Exchange. Company will continue to hopefully grow at a faster clip. We have made reasonably strong interventions and investments in Africa to reap the rewards going forward. Will could there be an event in Africa at some point in time? Who knows? I mean, you can never say never do anything. But of recent vintages, what we have done is showcasing Airtel Africa money, which has brought in 3 very strong marquee investors demonstrating a massive hidden value, a hidden gem within Airtel Africa, which is probably the same value as the mothership. And that has been demonstrated through investments recently by QIA, before that TPG and of course Mastercard. And I can share with you a lot more people are very keen to subscribe to more equity of Airtel money there. So my own view is we have a very strong asset, which is growing at probably twice the pace of a competitive set of players in the market. So let's grow this asset. We have spent a lot of time, a lot of money on this. Let this be a $10,000,000,000 $15,000,000,000 $20,000,000,000 asset in the next few years. I have no doubt that if we can continue to show what we have been doing in the last few years, the next 4 or 5 years could have a multiplier effect on the value creation in Africa. Thank you, sir. Shifting gears a little bit, some of the investors want to know what is the leverage at Bharti Telecom? And could we actually have a scenario where Bharti Telecom again sells shares in the future to bring down leverage? Well, I know most of you are upset with what we did, and I know this may be a matter of concern. I think we are at a level where selling anymore would really be not appropriate for us and we have no plans. I think we have to see ourselves in the situation when we did that. The debt load on the company was high. AGR had come like a ton of bricks. BGR had a big leverage rating agency that started to roll in that debt into our overall debt. The messages you're getting was that people hate promoter companies being leveraged. Even though we had no, as you know, pledge of shares or anything like that, which you have never done, That message was loud and clear. We responded to that. Today, Bharati Telecom has 0 debt. And that means that company doesn't need to do anything. We didn't last time sell and pay ourselves rich dividends to enjoy cash flows coming to us as shareholders. It was just to pay back the debt, which has been done. So there is no plan. I mean, I don't want to ever pin myself down to say ever, but there are no plans to sell anything. And Bharti Telecom is absolutely in a comfortable position to subscribe to its portion and perhaps much more. Thank you, sir. One question is on the structure of the rights issue itself. Why this deferred payment structure rather than taking money upfront, why staggering it out over 36 months? Well, I think we've followed some of the leading rights issue in the marketplace. We saw Reliance and Tata's do it. We just felt that was the right thing to do. Secondly, more importantly, this allows the shareholders to put in money over a period of time, gives them a better, I would say, value for their money, time value for the money. And we will draw this money as Gopal's plans keep on getting crystallized. As his acceleration starts to take place, we will keep on coming back to the market. In our assessment, it should not be more than 3 years, but will it be 6 months? No. So there is a reasonable period indicated out there. We'll pick up 25% immediately. One tranche will happen probably midpoint and then much before the 3 years or depending on how the cash flow, if the tariffs suddenly rise, may have more leverage to defer by a few months. So let's see how it goes. The idea was to make it easy for all to invest and take money only when it is required. A related question is what is the general capital allocation policy you would like to follow? How do you think about raising money at the parent level? And what are the parameters within which you would invest it in the subsidiary companies? Well, I mean, I would say subsidiary companies are all go to market are going to be intrinsically 100% owned by us. Today, if we had a clarity on non telecom revenues not being AGRized, I would put DTH in the same bucket as Airtel. So even if they are 100% subsidiaries, whether it's DTH or it is our digital player. They're all really part of the mothership. So take it as one. And the capital allocation is for all these areas. In terms of infrastructure side, data center is where we've got Carlyle now, so that becomes a subsidy in which you have additional shareholder. The money that we have got from Carlyle and some more is to come by March, probably is giving us enough leverage to roll out some data centers. But to accelerate that, we are allocating some more money from this rights issue. So the allocation will be on a need base. What we can see for the next 2 years, max 3 years, we'll start to invest in that. We don't want to heavily front load investments. And the beauty of telecommunications is you don't go out and build 10 1,000,000 steel plant or a 10,000,000 ton refinery or a 10,000,000 ton fertilizer plant, you grow as the need comes, but equally you need to be prepared for a large influx of customers or traffic rising. And to that extent, as I said, we'll be very responsible in putting just enough CapEx to take us for the next 1 or 2 years because even if you go wrong in your assessment, you always catch up with the normal growth. So that's the way we will allocate our money. We are very responsive. 2 things are critical for us, war on waste. We challenge every dollar that we need to spend, but equally we don't hesitate to spend $100,000,000 where it's required. So that's the philosophy we always had and we'll continue to have. Thank you, sir. In the interest of time, I will only be taking 2 more questions. The first question is on a related question on CapEx. The 4 gs CapEx cycle eventually saw us investing close to $35,000,000,000 Where do we think the 5 gs CapEx will lead us? What will be the 5 gs cycle will lead us? What will be the total investment that we foresee over the 5 gs CapEx cycle? And the second question is, there is a 3rd operator in the market who is weak, possibly likely to go through the IBC route. Would we be interested in any assets there? Well, I think the second question is really hypothetical. I shouldn't be answering. My stated position has been India should see a 3 private player scenario, and I will still keep on actively supporting that. We have enough spectrum. We really don't need any more assets to be taken by from anybody else. In our industry, the value of base stations, towers is very limited. Fiber which is sunken to the ground is very limited. So I would say we should all hope that even though weaker, a third operator should be there and be in the marketplace. So that would really be my view. And Komal, the first part of your question was? So what is the overall 5 gs CapEx? Yes, the 5 gs CapEx. Yes. On the 5 gs CapEx, I would say, in my opinion, 4 gs is largely done other than extra capacity that we are trying to create for any surge in traffic, which we'll provide for. Otherwise, the 5 gs CapEx will start to replace our cycle of 4 gs CapEx. So I don't see a significantly higher amount of 5 gs CapEx coming through. And the beauty of the 5 gs is that it has very large capacities. I mean, the difference from 2 gs to 3 gs to 4 gs we have seen the delta of capacity creation with the same dollar is huge. And in 5 gs, of course, it goes into a 100x situation from 4 gs. So putting a 5 gs in areas where there is more traffic on 4 gs will be ideal. We will be very granular, very modular in our approach. Each citizen will take on our first. We spot the 5 gs device population in each of our market. We go actually each of the power wise data. So wherever we see more 5 gs devices showing up on our network, we will start to light those 5 gs base stations up, but they will work very seamlessly with our 4 gs network as well. So it will be very judiciously spent. That's why I'm saying if we can somehow have the right price point for the spectrum, which we urge the government to look into, the growth of the 5 gs network will follow the traffic, the devices. I mean, I travel even despite the pandemic, actively across the world. And I can tell you, it's not that everywhere you're going into London or into Paris or into New York, you are seeing 5 gs networks or people actively using 5 gs network. It's getting better by the day, but it's not house on fire at the moment. So India will also see 5 gs coming in a nice space, which will not put too much pressure. But one area which I must highlight is the fiber. You cannot be caught without a guard by not having the backhaul in place. That part you need to invest now because 5 gs is coming. It's only a matter of whether it's 6 months after the H2 next year or 1 year, and that takes time. Fiber digging, fiber connectivity is a long lead time and a large investment has to go there. On the radio network side or the core of 5 gs, I will not worry too much. It's very modular and will be well planned. Thank you. So I think with this, we will conclude the call. I would like to pass it back to you, sir, for any closing remarks. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for your patience listening. I may not have been able to answer all the questions in the given time, but I hope you get a drift of where our mind is. We will remain very, very focused on how we spend our monies, your money actually, you give us the money, we are the custodians. We participate alongside you to give you the confidence that it's not just your money, but it's a collective pool of monies that we are responsible for. It will be very well spent. I personally feel that the dollar that we are going to spend here and after is going to yield a significantly better return than we have seen in a long period of time. Will we get to the heavy days of the first 10 years of Airtel where we had 32% IRR? Possibly not. But will we remain in these 2%, 3%, 4% kind of returns? Answer is again absolutely not. We will be in healthy teens, and I'm not talking about too distant in the future. So every dollar that we can spend now must be spent, otherwise we'll miss this opportunity. Thank you. Thank you.