Sunil Mittal to hand over Airtel reins to next generation in a decade

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Enterprises, the parent company of India’s second-largest carrier Bharti Airtel, is looking to hand over to the next generation in a decade’s time, by which he expects promoter shareholding in Airtel to rise to above 51 per cent.

Mittal, who briefly joined the earnings call for the quarter ended March 2026 on Thursday, said he wanted promoter holding to be consolidated under Bharti Telecom, which has been the founding promoter company, and raise the promoter stake using the “twin levers” of buybacks and continued dividends.

“If you really asked me, my own wish is that in the next decade, as I kind of come to a point where I hand over the reins to the next generation, as shareholders, Bharti Telecom should get back to a controlling shareholding of 51 per cent, or just over 50 per cent. So that's 10 per cent more to go, and for a company of this magnitude and size, that is not a small task,” Mittal said while addressing questions from analysts.

On Wednesday, Airtel’s board approved an increase in shareholding in Airtel Africa through a Rs 28,200 crore share-swap deal. Under the terms, Airtel will issue 146,761,335 shares to promoter group company Indian Continent Investment Limited (ICIL) on a preferential basis.

In the swap, ICIL will acquire a 16.3 per cent stake in UK-listed Airtel Africa Plc, leading to an increase in the indirect stake held by Bharti Airtel in the Africa entity to 79.04 per cent. ICIL's stake in Bharti Airtel could rise up to 3.25 per cent from current levels of a little under 1 per cent. The residual stake of promoter entities, outside of Bharti Telecom, would increase to about 10.6 per cent, including the Mittal family and SingTel.

“The principal direction or vision that I carry in my mind is all shares that we can get from both ICIL or Bharti family entities, and SingTel should go into Bharti Telecom as much as possible,” he added.

Bharti Telecom should be the controlling promoter shareholder, which he said was not only the founding promoter but also mostly held a controlling shareholding of 51 per cent, he noted.

He added that Singapore-based SingTel, which has a direct stake of 7 per cent in Bharti Airtel, had 6 per cent more shareholding to sell for equalising its holding with Bharti Telecom. Following the announcement on Wednesday, the gap would come down to 3.6 per cent, making it easier for SingTel to potentially reduce its holding over the next three to four years at less than 1 per cent per year.

“That brings us to equal stake, and then it will be during this period of our effort, depending on how well the entire management team delivers wonderful cash flows, more dividends, more buybacks. The idea would be to keep using that twin lever to get BTL above the 50 per cent stake. That'll be my cherished desire. Our stake must go back to BTL. For that, I need a little bit more leverage in the hands of BTL, which I'm hoping will be delivered through continuously enhanced dividend, and hopefully in the next couple of years, some buybacks in addition to the dividend, and that will give us the necessary capacity in BTL to buy more,” Mittal added.

Mittal, who was reappointed as chairman of Bharti Airtel for another five years beginning October this year, added that Airtel would acquire more shares in FTSE-listed Airtel Africa over the next seven to eight years, going up to the limit of 90 per cent permitted by UK regulations.

“We need to own more of it. Thankfully, the UK regulations allow you to go up to 90 per cent. The ambition for Airtel should be whatever is allowed to go up to 90 per cent one day, should get there, and that is being ably helped by Airtel Africa's own buyback programme. They have been doing buybacks from time to time. Hopefully, in the next few years, with the buyback programme, and if some other block comes from any other investor to Airtel’s attention, we will probably, in the next several years, get to that point of owning more of Africa so that we can get more income flowing back to the mothership, Bharti Airtel, and reward our shareholders even more,” he added.

Mittal called out Indian IT companies for not growing beyond the cycles of dividends and buybacks and not acquiring companies in their own segments, a path that Airtel would not take.

“We'll do dividends and buybacks, but we’ll never become like IT companies who have done nothing but just taken money out as dividends and buybacks, and become a shadow of themselves. Many of those companies should have been buying leading-edge businesses in their own industry in the last 10-15 years. They would have been in a different position today,” he said.

He noted that while no international acquisition was on the table, taking Airtel’s overall customer base to over 800 million was not far.