Reliance Jio<\/a>, which is India's largest telecom player, has launched new postpaid family plans starting from Rs 399 and Rs 99 for every add-on connection.
Jio<\/a>'s new plan, which is at a discount of around 30% to other competitors, comes at a time when investors were hoping for tariff hikes in the stressed telecom sector.
Market watchers say an increase in competitive intensity could delay tariff hikes and pose downside risk for Airtel investors<\/a>.
Bharti Airtel<\/a> shares, down nearly 8% in the last 3 months, lost up to 2.5% at Rs 752.20 in today's session.
\"Jio has so far been unable to replicate its prepaid success in the postpaid category (~7.5% of subs and ~10% of industry<\/a> revenue), but we believe its new family postpaid offerings are attractively priced and could lead to renewed price competition in postpaid,\" said Kotak analysts Aditya Bansal and Anil Sharma.
Just a fortnight ago, Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Mittal<\/a> had said that a rate hike is likely to happen in the middle of this year.
\"Lot of capital has been injected (into Airtel) that has made the balance sheet strong but the return on capital of this industry is very low. That needs to change. We are talking of small increments that need to come in the Indian tariff situation. I hope (by) half of this year,\" Mittal had said.
Analysts, however, do not expect Jio to get aggressive in the larger prepaid data segment, as it remains the market leader and requires the highest incremental tariff hike (12% versus 4% for peers) just to break-even on 5G spectrum<\/a> outlay.
\"We continue to build in a 20% tariff hike on prepaid data packs from 2HCY23 in our base case, but would monitor the competitive intensity in the sector,\" Kotak analysts said noting that for every Rs 10 lower ARPU, the consolidated EBITDA could decline by 2%\/3%\/10% for RIL\/Bharti\/Vi.
Kotak has a buy rating on RIL<\/a> with a target price of Rs 3,000 and an add rating on Airtel with a target price of Rs 875. Airtel remains a consensus pick on Dalal Street with 25 out of 30 analysts covering the stock giving it a buy rating.
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