Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Michele, the moderator for this conference. Welcome to Indus Towers Limited's fourth quarter and full-year end date, March 30, 2025, earnings call. For the duration of the presentation, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. After the presentation, the question-and-answer session will be conducted for all the participants on this call. In case of a natural disaster, the conference call will be terminated post an announcement. Present with us on the call today is the senior leadership team of Indus Towers. Before I hand over the call, 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. I now hand the conference over to the MD and CEO of Indus Towers, Mr. Prachur Sah. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Sah.
Thank you, Michele. A very warm welcome to all participants. Joining me today are my colleagues, Mr. Vikas Poddar, CFO; Mr. Tejinder Kalra, COO; and Mr. Dheeraj Agarwal, Head Investor Relations, on the call. I'm pleased to present our business performance for the quarter and year end date of March 31, 2025. We're proud to have delivered another stellar year with our current tenancy additions being one of the highest in our history after having a record-breaking performance in FY 2024. Our inherent strengths, including superior execution capabilities, have helped us maintain a major share in our customers' portfolios. This outcome has led to a significant tenancy accretion from our customers. In addition to the operational performance, we were also satisfied to see a persistent engagement rate reward, resulting in the customer clearing the entire overdue amount, which is INR 51 billion in this financial year alone.
Additionally, in line with our strategy of expanding our portfolio, we executed a transaction to acquire about 12,600 towers from Bharti Airtel during the year. Before moving on to the key aspects of our business, I would like to applaud the exceptional commitment of our field team, who work tirelessly amidst a backdrop of tough environmental and logistical challenges to ensure seamless connectivity. The quarter gone by saw the historic 45-day long Maha Kumbh event, bringing together more than 660 million devotees, and we are proud to have contributed to this grand spectacle by deploying 177 towers in collaboration with the government. This not only showcases the capabilities of Indus Towers to manage the connectivity needs of such a large congregation, but also reflects the grit and agility of its people on the ground.
The field teams also braced adverse weather conditions to install towers in the northeastern district of Tawang, ensuring connectivity. On the regulatory front, the government continues to push reforms to support the swift deployment of telecom infrastructure, keeping sustainability in mind. To this end, the central government made mandatory procedures to follow the Right of Way Rules 2024 since the start of the calendar year. These are aimed at resolving integration issues within the industry and ensuring efficient deployment of telecommunication infrastructure. Furthermore, the Green Energy Open Access Policy has been adopted by nearly 24 states, serving as an important catalyst for accelerating the shift towards renewable energy and enhancing overall energy efficiency. Separately, the composite billing scheme, which was rolled out a few quarters ago, has now been officialized in 11 states, including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
By consolidating multiple connection bills into a single invoice, the scheme simplifies billing operations and streamlines the management of large volume of accounts. When it comes to 5G, close to 40,000 5G base stations were rolled out in the industry in the last financial year, with a total base now standing at close to 475,000. While the pace of deployment has moderated, 5G-related loading continues to contribute meaningfully to our overall loading revenues. We anticipate that once 5G penetration deepens further, there will be a natural uptake in the demand for new sites to support network deep integration. Given our expertise in passive infrastructure, we are well positioned to capture these emerging opportunities. Statistics mentioned in the Ericsson Mobility Report reiterate the rapid adoption of 5G by the customers.
As per the report, global 5G subscriptions grew by 162 million in the December quarter to a total of 2.3 billion, with 4G subscriptions falling by 54 million. Global 5G subscriptions are expected to reach over 6.3 billion by 2030, accounting for around 67% of the total subscriptions. In India, 5G subscriptions are expected to reach around 970 million by the end of 2030. As per the latest TRAI report, the total 5G subscription base in India grew to 2.3 million at the end of 2025, increasing by 25 million during the quarter. The data consumption story in the country continues to play out strongly, underpinned by the continuous migration of users from 2G to 4G and the swift adoption of 5G.
The average data consumed per user per month across the top three operators grew 15% year-on-year to 27.5 GB for the quarter end date September 2024, with the total data consumed growing by 20% year-on-year. Additionally, as per TRAI, 5G data consumption grew 18% quarter-on-quarter and contributed 26.5% of total data usage in Q3 FY 2025, compared to 22.7% in Q2 FY 2025. As data consumption continues to soar and 5G technology becomes more ubiquitous, the requirement for passive infrastructure is expected to increase consistently to handle additional capacity, and we believe that we have the expertise to meet this rising demand efficiently. Our operational performance continues to be strong, as we recorded one of our highest new tenancy additions during the quarter. Additionally, we also have acquired 12,600 towers, including green from Bharti Airtel, to strengthen our tower portfolio further.
In Q4, we added 14,662 macro towers and 18,606 corresponding colocations, including this acquisition. Our total macro towers and colocations paid stood at 249,305 and 405,435, growing by 13.5% and 10% year-on-year, respectively. On a full-year basis, tower and colocation additions were at 29,500 and 36,800, respectively. Our industry-leading tenancy ratio stands at 1.63. In terms of green towers, colocation additions were at 2,386 in Q4, including acquisition of about 2,200 towers from Bharti Airtel. This resulted in the overall base increasing to 13,800. Including green towers, our net colocation additions were at 21,000 in Q4, compared to 7,700 in Q3. Following on from our operational performance, I would now like to provide an update on the progress we have made on each of our four key strategic pillars, namely market share, cost efficiency, network uptime, and sustainability.
On market share, we have failed to consistently maintain the majority of the market share in the business of our major customers. Our inherent strength, focus on automation, speed of acquisition, and construction, while ensuring quality and safety, remains the key reasons for us being our customers' preferred pick. We also improved our market share through the consolidation, as we have acquired about 12,600 towers from Bharti Airtel, a single operator portfolio, and offered the potential to share these towers with other operators. During the year, we continued to make digital interventions across the value chain, strengthened our partner ecosystem, and worked towards improving operational turnaround times. We also leveraged the government right-of-way policy to expand our reach across government land. As witnessed in FY 2025, we remained focused on getting a significant share of tenancies from all our customers, which bodes well for our growth prospects.
Our in-building solution, or IBS portfolio, continues to show strong growth, as we maintain leadership position in new rollouts for our customers. We are pleased to see that our deployments in Q4 are far closer to Q3, which were the highest in our history. We are confident of expanding this portfolio further. Looking at cost efficiency, we continue to focus on optimizing both operating and capital expenditure through multiple initiatives. Energy remains the major operating driver, particularly diesel costs. Through electrification of non-electrified sites, deployment of energy storage solutions, and the continued expansion of our renewable energy portfolio, we further reduced the diesel consumption by 6% year-on-year in FY 2025. We also added more than 15,000 solar sites during the year, taking the total base close to 30,000. We are optimizing network costs through targeted site prioritization, benchmarking, landlord segmentation, and leveraging the Gati Shakti portal.
Furthermore, our continued efforts on technological interventions and resource efficiency are driving productivity improvement, which can be seen in our network costs. On the CAPEX front, we are transitioning our battery portfolio to cost-efficient lithium-ion batteries, offering faster charging and longer life. In parallel, our tower portfolio is pivoting towards lighter tower variants, helping lower civil and material costs. We also implemented remote monitoring technologies to enable real-time site oversight and data collection, supporting infrastructure optimization and resource optimization to achieve cost savings. Collectively, these initiatives are enabling sustained improvements in both our operating and capital cost structures. On network uptime, an important metric for our customer satisfaction and quality of service, we continue to maintain a very high uptime and delivered an industry-leading uptime of 97.98% in Q4 2025, similar to Q3.
We were able to deliver these numbers despite heavy rains and thunderstorms in various areas of Karnataka, which is a testament to the dedication and perseverance of our team on the ground. Moving on to ESG, which remains central to our organizational priorities. On the environmental front, we are steadily advancing our efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. A key focus area has been minimizing our reliance on fossil fuels by progressively shifting our energy consumption towards cleaner renewable sources. To that end, we added more than 15,000 solar sites during the year, taking the base close to 30,000 at the end of March. Supplementing this was our strategic investment in captive solar projects under the Green Open Access initiative, as we entered into agreements with JSW Green Energy and Amplus for the procurement of solar power to meet our energy needs.
I would like to highlight that two years ago, we committed to net zero GHG emissions by 2050 in line with SBTi's Science Based Targets initiatives. We are pleased to see that our near-term and net zero targets have now been validated and approved by SBTi. To drive responsible practices across our value chain, we conducted ESG training sessions for more than 100 key partners to gain greater awareness and alignment of sustainability standards and continue to take initiatives to encourage the foundation to restrict methods for the business travel needs for both our employees and partners. During the year, we launched our Future Hub program in partnership with 1t.org, through which we aim to plant 1 million trees by 2027 in order to create a sizable carbon sink for our country.
We were happy to see our efforts towards environment being recognized as Transformance bestowed Indus with the Great Indian Sustainable Performance in Energy Efficiency Award. We are pleased to see our gender diversity increase from close to 12% at the beginning of the year to 16.2% by March 2025. Our efforts are geared towards enabling equal opportunities for women across the board from on-ground field roles to leadership positions. To that end, we launched our Women Leadership Development Program Shakti in collaboration with IIM Indore to equip our women employees with the requisite skills and behavior needed to take on leadership roles in the future. Gender diversity across the value chain is also important to us, and to this end, we launched HerSuccess program focusing on mutual sharing of proven strategies, best practices, and success stories with partners to drive progress .
On the CSR front, we carried out relief activities relating to the floods in Bihar, supporting over 2,000 lives. We are pleased to see our Digital Transformation Van initiative aimed at educating and upskilling disadvantaged individuals, expanding to nine states over the year. We were pleased to see our social initiatives being recognized by multiple bodies. During the year, we won the Mahatma Award 2024 for CSR Excellence and Gold Award and the Social Initiative category at Bharti Changemaker Awards 2024. Now, as part of the company strategy, I, along with the board, discussed the path forward for Indus Towers, given that now we have the backlog issue behind us. The strategy includes aggressively pursuing market shares through both organic and inorganic routes, as demonstrated by our acquisition of Bharti Airtel towers.
In addition, the scale of Indus, we are working on transforming our site infrastructure and leveraging digital solutions and AI to create new benchmarks of performance, which will further encourage all our customers to move their energy to Indus. Furthermore, I'm committed to distributing the cash to shareholders, and considering the discussion, the board has decided to appoint a subcommittee to comprehensively assess the modalities of distribution. I would now request Vikas to take you through our financial performance for the quarter, year-end date March 31, 2025, and I look forward to your questions. Over to you, Vikas. Thank you.
Thank you, Prachur, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to present our financial results for the quarter and full-year end date 31st March 2025. FY 25 was another strong year for us.
We achieved substantial tower and tenancy additions driven by our ability to capture a significant share of our customers' rollout plans. A key highlight of the year was the clearance of a large portion of overdue receivables from a major customer, which positively impacted our cash flows and overall financial health. Turning to the financial performance for Q4 FY 2025, we reported gross revenues of INR 77.3 billion, a year-on-year growth of 7.4%. The core revenues from rental grew by 10% year-on-year to INR 50.4 billion, supported by robust tower and colocation additions. On a sequential basis, our reported gross revenues and core revenues grew by 2.4% and 4.6%, respectively. In terms of profitability, reported EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 44 billion, representing a 7.1% increase year-on-year but a 37.2% decline quarter on quarter. The EBITDA margin was largely flat year-on-year at 56.9% but declined by 35.8 percentage points sequentially.
It is important to note that Q3 FY 2025 included a one-time write-back of approximately INR 30 billion related to the collection of overdue receivables, which significantly boosted EBITDA for that quarter. In Q4, we recorded a further write-back of INR 2.3 billion as the customer cleared additional dues. On the Airtel tower acquisition, as you know, we completed the acquisition of approximately 12,600 towers, with the asset transfer occurring in the last week of March. The acquisition is accounted as a common control transaction as per Indian accounting standards, which requires assets and liabilities to be recorded at carrying value. Accordingly, the difference of INR 18 billion between purchase consideration and carrying value is recognized as common control reserves. Further, the common control business combination requires a restatement of financial results from the date of common control, which is 19th of November 2024.
Accordingly, the Q4 financials include net loss of INR 1.7 billion, being operating expenses and depreciation from 19 November to 31 March 2025. This impact is largely non-cash in nature, as the towers were operated by Airtel during this period. Adjusted for the write-back and the accounting impact of the acquisition, our EBITDA grew 12.8% year-on-year and 7.6% quarter on quarter. Our reported energy margins were negative 5.2% in Q4, which includes accounting impact of common control transaction, as explained earlier. Adjusted for this, energy margins improved to minus 2%, driven by seasonality and reduction in diesel consumption. We undertook initiatives such as deployment of solar PVs and storage solutions to help us reduce our use of diesel. Profit after tax for Q4 stood at INR 17.8 billion, down by 4% year-on-year and 55.6% quarter on quarter. Excluding the runoffs, the normalized profit after tax grew 19% year-on-year and 15.3% sequentially.
Now, onto the full-year performance for FY 2025. Our reported gross revenues grew 5.3% year-on-year to INR 301 billion, and core revenues were up 8.3% year-on-year to INR 192 billion. Reported EBITDA was INR 208.4 billion, up 41.9% year-on-year, and profit after tax stood at INR 99.3 billion, an increase of 64.5% year-on-year. On a normalized basis, excluding runoffs, EBITDA and PAT grew 8.5% and 10.1%, respectively. We delivered strong returns with a reported pre-tax return on capital employed of 29.1% and a post-tax return on equity of 33.4% over the past 12 months. Our free cash flow generation remained robust at INR 38.7 billion for Q4 and INR 98.5 billion for the full year. The improvement in cash flow was driven by the continued business momentum and the collection of overdue receivables, which also led to a INR 25.5 billion reduction in trade receivables during the quarter.
In summary, FY 2025 was a year of strong operational and financial performance. We achieved significant tower and tenancy growth driven by our customers' network expansion and strengthened by the full clearance of our overdues. Looking ahead, we are well positioned to benefit from ongoing 5G rollouts, the rising data consumption, and industry consolidation opportunities. With that, I'll now hand it back to the moderator to open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin the question and answer interactive session for all the participants who are connected to audio conference service from Chorus Call. Due to time constraints, we would request if you could limit the number of questions to two to enable more participation. Hence, management will take only two questions per participant to ensure maximum participation.
Participants who wish to ask questions may please enter star and one on their touchtone-enabled telephone keypad. On pressing star and one, participants will get a chance to present their questions on first-in-line basis. To ask a question, participants may please enter star and one now. The first question comes from Mr. Sachin from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. First question is on dividend. There was a general expectation that once backlog from Vodafone Idea is cleared, your company will start giving dividends. I wanted to know the reasons for dividend being not declared and a committee being constituted, and any general thoughts that what could be a timeline when we could see a decision either on dividend or buyback coming.
A related question to that is we are acquiring Bharti Airtel 12,600 towers, so the amount roughly INR 20 billion-odd what you're paying to acquire these towers, will that also be constituted when you guys consider paying dividends? That's question number one. Okay.
For both the questions, I'll take the first one, and maybe we can take the second one with that. As I explained in my opening remarks, I think the company has generated a significant amount of cash share for the year which was also earned by the dividends in the past year, which enabled us to return a part of it to the shareholders through the buyback during the year.
As I discussed, the company's strategy with the board was to pursue growth, both organic and inorganic, some of that we saw in the results as well, and also to see how we can drive transformation of the site infrastructure and leverage new solutions. As I said earlier, I remain committed to rewarding the shareholders and implementing our strategy. Considering this, the board has formed a committee to comprehensively assess various viable options as stated before the board for its final approval. Now, as far as the timeline is concerned, I think since the committee has been announced yesterday, I do not believe it is going to be a long-drawn process, and we will make a suitable disclosure once we have an update on this. As far as the Airtel towers question.
Yeah.
Sachin, on the question about the amount which was paid to Bharti Airtel for the purchase of towers, that will obviously be factored in by the committee in deciding whatever distribution is decided later on.
Okay. Sorry, just to be clear that the committee is not going to take too much time, so within three months, the decision should be done, but at the time you end up reporting your one-two numbers, before that we should get a visibility on dividend or buyback, right?
Sachin, as I said, I'm not giving you a timeline in months or weeks, and what I'm expecting is it's not going to be a long-drawn process, and we'll keep you informed.
Okay. My second question is I just wanted to understand when should we start seeing tenancy improvement?
Now, I understand the incremental towers which have acquired this tower has dipped a bit of our tenancy, but from the business which is coming from Vodafone Idea, ideally should lead to a tenancy improvement, which we are not seeing in the numbers. I wanted to understand, should tenancy remain range-bound in the range of 1.63-1.65, or we should directly see that moving up going ahead?
1I mean, again, I'm not sure what you mean by that because if you remove the tower acquisition, in Q4, we have deployed 4,200 towers or 4,300 new towers, and the total tenancies have increased by more than 8,800. I think there's a significant tenancy addition that we have seen in Q4, and like we saw in Q3 as well.
Maybe because of the addition of Airtel towers, you're not seeing the tenancy impact, but I believe the tenancy growth has been, in fact, a record growth in this quarter compared to what has happened in the last many years.
That momentum should continue going ahead, Prachur?
I think we'll work with the customers to make sure that their manufacturing plans will continue to grab the maximum share.
Okay. All right. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from Sanjesh Jain from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple of them. First, starting with the dividend, the dividend policy remains intact, right? 85% of the free cash flow will be distributed to the investors. Does the method of repaying the cash need to be decided, or even the dividend policy is being rethinked by the committee?
Again, Sanjesh, I don't want to preempt what the committee will decide, but what I know for a fact is that, as I told you earlier, I think the multiple elements here, as I said, debt in addition, what we have to look at is the growth either for us in terms of what is the CapEx requirements for the growth in the times to come. This is that the committee will make a call on how the cash has to be distributed for allocation.
Clear. My next question is on the growth. Again, Prachur, you mentioned in your opening remarks that we will look at both organic and inorganic options to drive the acceleration in the growth. What are we really looking at in the next two years in terms of in-acquisition if we have anything in mind?
From an organic perspective, anything in the mind apart from the normal business of passive infrastructure?
No, I think our target is when I'm talking about the growth, I'm talking about towers. No other Towers and IBS is a growth. When I said inorganic, I meant if there is any opportunity available to do the consolidation we will do, like we did for the Airtel towers in this quarter. As far as the inorganic growth is concerned, while all our customers continue to roll out towers tenancies at different speeds, different quantities, and our idea is to make sure that we capture every single opportunity that is out there, whether it's a new tower or whether there's an opportunity to bring more tenancies from other companies to our site. I think we'll remain.
When I'm talking about growth, I'm focusing on the tower growth, which we have seen the flashing growth over the last two years, and we will keep the momentum going in the coming year as well.
Got it. Got it. On the industry growth itself.
Sorry for interrupting you , Mr. Jain. I would request you to rejoin the queue for follow-up questions as there are others waiting for their turn.
Fair enough. Thanks. Thanks for allowing me. Best of luck.
Thank you. A request to all the participants to kindly limit their questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. We'll take the next question from Mr. Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity.
At the time of announcing the purchase of towers from Airtel, you had mentioned that you will take loans to fund this transaction. Just to understand this better, in your balance sheet, I see that the borrowings are flat on a sequential basis. Does this mean that the transaction has not been funded with debt? That is question one. Secondly, I think to Sachin's question on dividends, I think Vikas you said that the Airtel transaction will also be a consideration for payment of dividend. Why is that the case? Because it seems to contradict what you said in the press release when you announced the purchase of towers. Thank you.
Vivekanand, to answer that broadly, the intent is to fund the tower acquisition through borrowing, but because we have substantial collection in this year, we use that to basically purchase the towers, but it should be seen more as a timing issue. As and when the distribution decision is made, whatever is required will be done at that point of time in terms of borrowing.
Okay. On my second question, which pertains to dividends, will the amount that was paid out to Airtel, will it be available, or has it already been earmarked for that purchase so now it is not available for distribution? Just to clarify that. I know the committee is still evaluating it, but because you had specifically called out that this transaction will be debt-funded, we thought that this money is available for dividend distribution.
No, but I think as Vikas mentioned earlier, I think it will be purely a timing issue. The intent is to fund this transaction through borrowing, so it's purely a cash management that was done.
All right. That's clear. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Mr. Aditya Suresh from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Two questions. First is, can you give us an update on the industry structure in particular? Kind of I'll be curious to see what you're seeing on the ground with Summit and ATC combining operations.
I mean, to be honest, I've answered this question earlier in the previous calls as well. I mean, I don't think it impacts as much because the structure remains the same with the entities that have changed.
From a modus operandi, I do not see much change. I can speak for myself. I think our focus remains to make sure that we remain in the market range in terms of grabbing the market share that is out there. From an industry structure point of view, we do not see any change per se with this change.
There is no migration which you are seeing. Is that a fair understanding?
Yeah. We only see positive migration towards it.
Okay. The second question is on the tower rentals per operator which you are collecting, right? Despite the increased 5G loading, despite the inflations embedded in the contracts, we have seen that moderate, right?
In the context of kind of what you said about this aggressive market share capture plan, plus noting that kind of I appreciate that if a second operator kind of comes into these towers, all operators get a discount. How should we directly think about your rental revenues per operator trending?
I'll take that. I think so. See, as far as the ARPT is concerned, while we report this as a KPI, but we have always maintained that there are several variables that impact this KPI. If I just maybe as a reminder, talk about some variables. First of all, there is the product mix. There are towers which are traditional towers which are more expensive in terms of rentals. There are towers which are less costly. There is also the other thing, other variable which is the standard escalation that kicks in every year.
There are loading like 5G, 4G, etc., which are different on each tower. There's a renewal discount. There's also sharing discount. As and when, let's say you will see the colocation increasing or the sharing increasing, which was the case in quarter four with a lot of the VIL rollouts, there's obviously a sharing discount that kicks in, right, in the intra-business that we are. All that basically impacts the ARPT. The other technical point that you need to keep in mind is the acquisition that happened was pretty much towards the end of the year, right, in the last week of March. While that sits in the tower numbers and the tenancy numbers, when it comes to ARPT, obviously that has a bearing in terms of the mathematical calculation, right? That dilutes the ARPT simply by virtue of being there in the denominator.
I think broadly, I mean, while this metric does indicate the trend, but with several moving parts, it's very difficult to really try to reconcile this with the revenue growth. Does that help, Aditya?
Yeah. Thank you, Vikash. Thank you for the clarification.
Thank you. The next question comes from Mr. Arun Prasath from Avendus Spark . Please go ahead.
Thank you for the question. Good afternoon, everyone. In your opening remarks, you mentioned that there is roughly 40,000 5G towers added during the year in the industry. Can you talk about more qualitatively on where this was done and what kind of a tower was done and similar kind of attributes in these 5G towers?
When I talked about the 40,000, it was not towers. It was the station. I think it's not a tower. 5G comes in the form of loading and tower towers as additional technology.
The addition is actually more on the technology side on an existing tower, not a separate tower.
Oh, okay. Okay. As such, there is the infill towers for 5G. It's not started on a broad basis.
Yeah. No, I don't think.
It's started yet. Once the operators still need to have a full 5G coverage, and then depending upon the data capacity needs, we'll see. I mean, in the 4G times, probably we'll see in the 5G times as well.
Okay. Understood. Is there any instance of where operators have felt congested in certain clusters and adding infill towers? Is that started in certain clusters, or it's largely they are having lower utilization at the cluster level?
See, we would not be able to comment on the utilization of per cluster for the operators.
We certainly see data growing, and obviously that's the reason why coverage and capacity infill sites are continuing to grow. Of course, as the operators feel congested in any clusters, they certainly would come back and ask us to put up either new towers or then roll out more capacity on the same site. That's the continuous thing that is happening.
Okay. Excellent. Just rephrase the question. As and when the certain clusters get congested, is it the tendency to put more, say, equipment in the existing towers, or have they reached a situation where they are thinking about the new infill towers?
I think it's a combination. I think I can't comment from an overall strategy for each operator, but I think it's a combination.
Wherever possible, they will add on the same tower and wherever there is a like last year or the year before last, there were significant additions of lean towers, and that probably serves the purpose of infill to an extent.
Okay. Understood. Okay. All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Mr. Saurabh Handa from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. Firstly, again, just to clarify on the dividend bit. So your free cash flow in the fourth quarter was INR 39 billion. This obviously does not include the consideration for the tower acquisition, which was INR 18 billion. If I take I mean, what would be the number you would consider for dividend payout? Would you take INR 39 billion, or would you take INR 39 billion minus INR 18 billion, which is INR 20 billion?
Assume your policy remains to pay out 100% of free cash flow. Just wanted some clarification because I think I've been a bit confused because previously you had said that the acquisition would be completely debt-funded and therefore not have a bearing on shareholder returns.
Sorry, I think that question. I think this pretty much we tried to address and explain in the first round itself when Sachin had raised a very similar point. From a cash management perspective and because we have generated a very healthy cash in quarter four as well as on a full-year basis, we have used that cash to fund the acquisition, which obviously will lead to long-term growth and all that. Like I said, obviously the committee will take into consideration all these things.
They will obviously look at the free cash flow generation and then decide the distribution modalities and the amount, etc. Like I said, the fact that any acquisition, etc., or any inorganic growth needs to be funded through debt or leverage is basically more like a timing thing. Because there was surplus available, we used that, but we are open to sort of leverage in future depending on whatever decision gets taken.
Okay. That's sharp. Just my second question. You spoke about the ARPT being impacted by the denominator, which makes sense. In fiscal 2025, the ARPT, which was 40,856, what would be the number if you had not adjusted for the acquisition? I'm just trying to get a sense of, say, compared to the previous financial year, I think the number you had declared was 41,198. What would that number be now?
See, the number that you see is roughly a 1.1% growth sequentially. That probably without the acquisition would have been something like a 2.5% growth sequentially.
Okay. So even the ARPT of that 41,893 includes the acquisition?
Yeah. That includes the acquisition because, like I said, we included those sites in our overall portfolio in the last week of March. As of 31 March, that was sitting in the portfolio and hence the calculation.
Sorry, you said that would be how much without it? 2.5%?
Roughly 2.5%.
Okay. Got it. Thank you so much. Thank you.
No problem.
Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from Vivekanand Subraman from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I have a couple of follow-ups. Number one is on the new composite building scheme that you have rolled out.
Earlier, you were mentioning about a very different kind of energy contract model, fixed energy model versus reimbursement. Is this composite billing in the nature of the fixed energy model? Can you please elaborate on how this could potentially influence your energy margins in the long term? That is question one. Secondly, based on your conversations with Telcos, how is the fiscal 2026 CAPEX outlook looking like for you?
On the first question, I would like to clarify. When I was talking about composite billing, it was not composite billing for billing to our customers. It was a composite billing from discounts for our sites because we have distributed assets. We get bills for individual towers. What we have been trying with the government is to see if we can get a composite bill in a given state.
That makes the transactions a bit easier and much simpler to manage. The composite billing was not from our customer point of view. It is a government initiative to provide composite billing to large users so that they can have the billing settlement and things easier to do. That is the clarification on the composite billing. What's the second question? See, I think as I told FI26, I think we remain confident that FI26 will also continue a strong year of growth. While I can't comment specifically on what the operator plans are, I believe our order book is quite strong that I'm seeing currently.
Yeah. Just on that, one small follow-up. We saw that the CapEx has declined by around 24% in fiscal 2025 versus 2024, and this trend has been pretty much intact through the quarters.
Should we take fiscal 2025 as a new normal for CapEx, or will it further go down from here?
Again, I won't specifically talk about any numbers. This year, we had a significant tower rollout and tenancy rollout as well. Obviously, higher the tenancy is, lower the tenancy is not the same cost as putting a new tower. I don't want to say what specific trend you would see, but all I can say, the tower and tenancy growth will remain strong in the coming year.
Okay. Thank you so much and all the very best.
Thank you. The next question comes from Mr. Kunal Vora from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. First is, material CapEx seems a little higher this quarter. Any reason for that? Yeah.
I mean, if I can answer, typically, if you see Quarter Four is the time where we are setting ourselves for monsoon as well. I think typically the maintenance CAPEX every year Q4 sees a little bit of a jump because this is a time post-monsoon. In fact, Q3 and both Q4 and Q1 typically sees a higher number than the middle two quarters because post-rain is when you can start seeing to go to the sites and start deploying the infrastructure to get ready for monsoon or do whatever replacements you have to do. It is not Q4 specifically. It is generally how the maintenance happens.
Understood. Energy margins, what I understood is there is a one-off impact because of which it took fire, but otherwise, normalized is 2%. How are you looking at it going forward? Around 2% range or?
Kunal, I think so.
I mean, if you look at our energy cost, the energy cost is being managed pretty well. We have been running various initiatives like solar deployment, reducing diesel consumption, etc. Even batteries, as we mentioned earlier in the discussion today, replacing our old batteries with new lithium-ion batteries, which are more energy efficient and so on. You see a lot of control on the cost. However, there are basically reconciliation issues and recovery issues, which is something that we are trying to sort out. Hopefully, the other thing is, of course, the Q4 number should not be seen as a benchmark simply because there is always a lot of seasonality in the energy business, right? Somewhere we will try to improve this going forward, but it's very difficult to put a number to this. Okay.
On rental revenue on the wheel forward, how do we look at it? Like fourth quarter, the new tower rental revenue did not come in, right? Or at least it came, a very small proportion of that would have come. In one year, we should see a full reflection of the new tower?
Yeah. You're right. That's how it works. I mean, typically, whatever rollouts happen in the quarter, the full quarterly impact of that is visible only in the following quarter.
I was talking about acquired towers. I was talking about acquired towers and not the.
yeah. Acquired towers have two days of revenue in this quarter, but of course, the next quarter will reflect the full quarter revenue.
Understood. In that case, what was the driver of rental revenue this quarter? 4.5% quarter on quarter is a decent number.
Broadly, I would say two drivers, Kunal. One is, of course, the healthy tower and tenancy or colocation additions that we have done. That, of course, will keep driving. The other important driver is also whatever loading growth we get through 5G, etc., plus the annual escalation. All these are basically driving. Then, of course, quarter four being end of the year, there are also some reconciliation benefits that are there sitting in the quarterly numbers. All this has basically driven the roughly 4%-4.5% top line or the core revenue growth that you see.
Any part of that would have been one-off? How do we think about the.
There is a one-off, which is roughly, let's say, 2.1 percentage points sequentially. That is basically, like I said, the year-end reconciliation benefits that are reflected in this quarter.
Understood. That's it from me.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question comes from Mr. Kishan Mundhra from DAM Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi sir. Thank you for taking my question. Just have one question. In the previous quarter, you had announced your foray into EV charging infrastructure. Just wanted to understand if you have firmed up any plans on that front and what is your CapEx that you expect to put into this business over the next two years?
Kishan, I think as I explained in the last earning call as well, what we started to look at is the commercial pilot for the EV business. Based on the pilot results, if it gives us scale, then we would consider whether we want to expand or if it's something that we'll hold back. I think currently we're evaluating that pilot.
If it offers some scale, then we'll have a discussion. If not, I think our focus will remain on the towers. We'll keep you posted on any decision on that front.
Okay. Understood. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question comes from Chetan Sharma from Systematix Shares and Stocks Limited. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yes. My question regarding the potential partnership between Starlink and the telecom giants, like Airtel and Vodafone, the question is what will be the role of the future on the traditional towers? Would this collaboration render a tower redundant?
To be honest, I think it's a good question. However, as of now, based on our discussions with the telecom operators and in general, I think there are limitations and commercial constraints as far as the satellite technology is concerned.
We do not see that risk on a terrestrial network in the foreseeable future, right? I do not expect that impacting us anytime soon.
Mr. Sharma?
That was my last question. Thank you.
The next question comes from Mr. Varatharajan Sivasankaran from Antique Limited. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity, sir. You had at one point in time discussed the possibility of entering into infrastructure like data centers. Is there any kind of discussion on that? Do you see something like that happening in the near future?
Honestly speaking, I do not think we ever discussed. I do not think, sorry, Varatharajan, I do not think we discussed data centers from our side. There was some speculation done in media. I think that was a very speculative article that had come out.
I do not think we have discussed that as an option currently because our focus remains on the tower growth primarily. As of now, data center is not in the consideration.
Do you have any further questions?
No. I am good. Thank you.
Thank you. We will take the next question from Mr. Sanjesh Jain from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Vikas, I got just one clarification. There is a line item in the cash flow which talks about the consideration paid for the acquisition of passive infrastructure of INR 1,800 crore. This, I thought, is a payment for the Airtel Infra, the towers we bought, correct?
That is right, Sanjay.
Because in many instances, we told that we have not paid this consideration. I saw that it has been paid, right? There is nothing pending to be paid to Airtel from this perspective, right? Only the Hexacom deal is yet to be consummated.
Is that understanding right?
That's right. That's right. Yes.
Got it. Thanks. That's the one. Sachin, Prachur, I was just asking you a question before I got disconnected. If you look at the growth on the data side, it has materially decelerated despite FWA, one of the largest operators, has reported under 20% growth on the data. The data consumption really showing a pattern of saturating. Mind you, this is despite 5G being unlimited today. Once it cap, I think things may get only lower on the growth side. Do you think the demand for tower itself see a material decline now that we have created so much of capacity on 5G?
Do you think the growth, because again, if you look at industry-wide, the tenancy addition has materially slowed down in the last one year, any reason to believe that the growth will continue on the tenancy addition apart from Vodafone helping to up their coverage on 4G and 5G?
No. Obviously, as you see, I mean, our business is not infinite. If you see for the last two years, last year we added about 35,000-odd tenancies. This year we are adding another 35,000-odd tenancies or somewhere around that number. From a year-on-year basis, our tenancy has remained elevated for the last two years.
Now, of course, this cannot be a permanent status, but as the urban periphery expands, as the rural areas get more, and for us also, our opportunity is to create lower-cost solutions for the customers so that some of the towers, which may not be viable in the past, can now become viable. I think growth is for us to see how we can push the boundaries in terms of what we can offer to the customers so some of the towers can become more viable for them at a lower revenue as well. I think while the organic growth may see limitations, I still believe the next year or so will remain strong given the fact that the other customers are catching up to the network expansion.
At the same time, we'll continue to push the boundaries in terms of how we can create better solutions for the customers to come create more towers and tenancies, which were earlier not possible.
Clear. Clear. One data tipping last question. Vikas, you said that we have consolidated or restricted the numbers from 19th of November. That means the acquisition should have ideally reflected the full quarter impact, right?
Not so it reflects the full quarter impact as far as the cost, OPEX, and depreciation is concerned, Sanjay. It is not a billable quarter because the operation handing over happened in the last week of March. From a revenue perspective, it will be reflected in the next quarter.
We have booked all the cost, not the revenue. Got it. Got it. The cost and depreciation have been accounted for, but not the revenue. Yeah.
This is as per the Indian accounting standards. Between group entities, if there is a common control business combination, then the reinstatement of financials needs to happen from the date of common control.
That's very clear. Thanks. Thanks for answering all those questions. Again, best of luck for the coming quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from Mr. Aditya Bansal from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah. This is Aditya Bansal. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to understand the ARPT profiles currently for the towers acquired from Airtel. Like what would be in the next year? What should we take?
See, the towers acquired from Airtel as of the acquisition date or the year-end date are largely single tenancy towers, right? They will have the ARPT or the revenue in line with the MSA for single tenancy.
As and when we get more tenancy, then obviously there will be some growth in terms of overall revenue for the tower and so on. For the time being, we are reflecting largely the single tenancy revenues.
Sure. Like which circles would this be pertinent to, and is there an opportunity to have an incremental tenant here?
They are across the country, pretty much in all circles. Of course, there is an opportunity which we'll be working on.
Sure. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conclude the question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference back to Mr. Prachur, MD and CEO, for closing comments. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Thank you, sir. In summary, FY 2025 marks another strong year for Indus Towers.
Given by robust tower and tenancy additions, as we retained a significant share of our customers' network expansion. Equally important, a major customer cleared its large overdue payments during the year, aiding the generation of strong cash flows. Notably, our customers are continuing with their rollout activities, providing us with an opportunity to secure a substantial share of their rollouts. We will continue to work towards strengthening our market leadership positions through participation in customer rollouts and investing in strategic opportunities. Thank you and have a good day.
Thank you, members of the management. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for connecting to audio conference service from Chorus Call, and have a pleasant evening. Thank you so much.