Airtel Africa (AAF.L) — Company Research

Last Updated: 8 September 2026

Airtel Africa is a mobile network operator and mobile money business running across fourteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa, listed in London and Lagos and roughly 79% owned by India's Bharti Airtel. Financial year 2026, which ended on 31 March 2026, was the year the reported numbers finally caught up with the underlying business: revenue rose 29.5% to $6,415m and profit after tax jumped 147% to $813m, largely because the Nigerian naira stopped falling. The operating story underneath — 183.5m customers, data revenue overtaking voice, and an Airtel Money franchise processing an annualised $245bn of transactions — had been growing at roughly 20% in constant currency throughout the period in which reported revenue appeared to shrink. This report sets out the reported figures, the currency mechanics that distort them, and the scheduled events that will test the position. It contains no analyst opinions, price targets or ratings.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	Airtel Africa plc
Listings	London Stock Exchange (AAF, FTSE 100) and Nigerian Exchange (AIRTELAFRI)
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Sector	Telecommunications and mobile financial services
Markets served	14 countries across East, Central and West Africa
CEO / Leadership	Sunil Taldar, Chief Executive Officer. Kamal Dua, Chief Financial Officer. Gopal Vittal, Non-Executive Chair from 9 July 2026.
Employees	4,512 permanent (on-roll) employees at 31 March 2026; 26,307 including off-roll personnel
Revenue (FY2026, year ended 31 March 2026)	$6,415m, up 29.5% reported and 24.0% in constant currency
Profit after tax (FY2026)	$813m, up 147.4%
Underlying EBITDA (FY2026)	$3,162m at a 49.3% margin
Customers (30 June 2026)	189.0m total; 87.3m data customers; 56.5m Airtel Money customers
Share price	348.0p (8 September 2026)
Market cap	£12.63bn (approximately $17.1bn)
Shares in issue	3,635,772,073 at 31 August 2026; 3,629,635,395 voting rights
Controlling shareholder	Bharti Airtel Limited, approximately 79% following the June 2026 share swap
Reporting currency	US dollars; financial year ends 31 March

Figures are taken from the FY2026 results release of 8 May 2026 and the Q1 FY2027 release of 23 July 2026. Market data is as at 8 September 2026.

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Constant-currency growth has been remarkably steady: revenue grew 23.3%, 17.6%, 20.9%, 21.1% and 24.0% in constant currency across FY2022 to FY2026. The reported line swung from plus 20.6% to minus 5.3% and back to plus 29.5% over the same period purely on translation. The operating business has compounded at roughly a fifth a year without interruption.
• Mobile money is scaling faster than the telco: Airtel Money reached 56.5m customers at 30 June 2026, up 23.3%, on annualised transaction value above $245bn, up 51.5%. It generated $1,355m of FY2026 revenue at a 50.8% EBITDA margin. A separate listing of this unit, for which London has been confirmed as the preferred venue, would give it its own quoted price.
• The balance sheet has been repaired and de-dollarised: leverage fell from 2.2x to 1.7x in twelve months, 93% of operating-company debt is now in local currency against 64% in FY2023, and the weighted average interest rate has fallen from 12.9% to 10.1%. Gross borrowings came down from $2,321m to $2,188m while the business grew.
• Data is now the largest revenue line and usage is compounding: data revenue of $2,530m in FY2026 overtook voice at $2,318m, on 35.2% constant-currency growth. Consumption reached 10.6 GB per customer per month against 7.8 GB a year earlier, with smartphone penetration at 51.0% — meaning roughly half the base has not yet upgraded.
• Capital is being returned while the business invests: a $100m buyback completed in March 2026 retired 45m shares, a third programme of up to 1% of issued capital began in May 2026 with $46.6m spent by 30 June, and all repurchased shares are cancelled. The dividend has risen every year, from 5.00 to 7.10 US cents across the five years shown.

Bear Case

• The reported numbers are a currency bet as much as an operating one: naira devaluation alone cut FY2024 reported revenue by $1,042m and EBITDA by $554m. The company's own sensitivity is that a 1% appreciation of the dollar against all operating currencies costs roughly $45m to $47m of revenue and $21m to $22m of EBITDA over twelve months. FY2026's headline growth was flattered by that mechanism running in reverse.
• Net debt is more than double gross borrowings: net debt of $5,739m at 30 June 2026 sits against gross borrowings of only $2,188m at the March year end. The difference is roughly $4.2bn of lease liabilities, a substantial share of them dollar-denominated tower leases, against revenue earned in fourteen soft currencies. Reported leverage of 1.7x becomes 0.5x only on a lease-adjusted basis.
• The Airtel Money put option is a dated contingent cash call: the Rise Fund and Mastercard can require Airtel Africa to buy back their stakes in the mobile money subsidiary if the listing does not happen. The liability stood at $515m at 31 March 2026. The lock-in was extended once and the extended window elapsed on 31 July 2026 with no listing executed, while the timetable has already slipped from the first half of 2026 to the second.
• Margin guidance has turned cautious: both the FY2026 and Q1 FY2027 statements warn that higher energy costs arising from recent geopolitical developments are expected to weigh on EBITDA margins in the near term. Margin has already eased from a record 50.3% in the March quarter to 50.1% in the June quarter, and the chief executive publicly identified power supply and network vandalism as material operating problems on 1 September 2026.

3. Revenue Segments

Airtel Africa reports on two axes: by geography and by service line. Both are set out below for FY2026, the year ended 31 March 2026.

Segment (by service line)	% of revenue	What it is
Data	37.9%	$2,530m gross, up 35.2% in constant currency. Now the largest single line, serving 84.2m data customers at 8.9 GB per month and representing 47.3% of mobile services revenue, up from 43.0%.
Voice	34.7%	$2,318m gross, up 12.8% in constant currency. Legacy prepaid voice across 183.5m customers at 287 minutes each per month and an ARPU of $1.1. Still large, but structurally the declining share.
Mobile money (Airtel Money)	20.3%	$1,355m gross, up 28.4% in constant currency at a 50.8% EBITDA margin. Wallet $648m, payments and transfers $573m, financial services $61m, other $73m. Served through 49,000 exclusive outlets and a rapidly expanding agent network.
Other	7.2%	$480m gross, up 12.0% in constant currency. Enterprise connectivity, Telesonic wholesale fibre, tower and site sharing, Nxtra data centres and handset sales.

Service-line figures are gross and sum to $6,683m before $268m of inter-segment eliminations. By geography, East Africa (Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) contributed $2,192m or 41.0% of the regional total at 13.8% constant-currency growth; Nigeria contributed $1,598m or 29.9% at 47.4% growth and the highest margin in the group at 57.8% EBITDA; and Francophone Africa (Chad, DRC, Gabon, Madagascar, Niger, Republic of Congo and Seychelles) contributed $1,550m or 29.0% at 14.8% growth.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Airtel Africa sells prepaid airtime, mobile data and mobile money services to a base of 189m customers, almost all of whom pay in advance. Roughly 83% of group revenue comes from mobile services and 17% from mobile money after eliminations. Because customers top up before they consume, the business collects cash ahead of delivering service, which is why operating cash flow of $3,195m in FY2026 comfortably exceeded reported profit after tax of $813m.

Where the durability comes from. Three things are hard for a new entrant to replicate. The first is spectrum and towers: Airtel operates licensed spectrum in fourteen countries and had 3,116 operational 5G sites and 81,900 km of fibre at the March 2026 year end, an asset base assembled over two decades. The second is the agent network. Airtel Money runs through 49,000 exclusive outlets plus a non-exclusive agent base that grew 39% in FY2026, and in markets where most transactions are still cash, physical cash-in and cash-out points are the actual product. The third is the two-sided effect between the two businesses: the myAirtel app is a single front end for airtime and money, and app transaction value rose 79% to $8.3bn in FY2026.

Why the moat is narrower than it looks. Airtel is the second or third operator in most of its markets rather than the incumbent, and it has increasingly chosen to share infrastructure with rivals rather than out-build them — tower and fibre sharing agreements with MTN in Uganda and Nigeria in March 2025 and with Vodacom in Tanzania, the DRC and Mozambique in August 2025. Those deals lower cost but also erode network differentiation.

Where the operating leverage sits. Group EBITDA margin reached 49.3% for FY2026 and 50.1% in the June 2026 quarter. Incremental data traffic runs over spectrum and towers that are already paid for, so revenue growth converts to profit at a high rate: Q1 FY2027 revenue rose 31.0% while EBITDA rose 36.6%. The same leverage works in reverse when energy costs rise, which is precisely the near-term risk management has flagged.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Airtel Africa's own results releases and annual reports. The company reports in US dollars with a financial year ending 31 March, so FY2026 covers the twelve months to 31 March 2026.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 31 Mar 2022)	4,714	+20.6%	16.8c	16.0c	5.00c	$2,272m
FY2023 (to 31 Mar 2023)	5,255	+11.5%	17.7c	13.6c	5.45c	$2,178m
FY2024 (to 31 Mar 2024)	4,979	−5.3%	(4.4c)	10.1c	5.95c	$2,373m
FY2025 (to 31 Mar 2025)	4,955	−0.5%	6.0c	8.2c	6.50c	$2,321m
FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	6,415	+29.5%	18.6c	18.6c	7.10c	$2,188m

EPS is in US cents. Adjusted EPS is the company's own "earnings per share before exceptional items" measure. In FY2026 there were no exceptional items, so the two measures are identical at 18.6 US cents — this is not a transcription error. Long-term debt is total borrowings (current plus non-current) at the year end and excludes lease liabilities, which is why it bears little resemblance to net debt; at 31 March 2026 the group also carried roughly $4.2bn of lease obligations, largely tower leases. Dividend per share is the total declared for that financial year.

The revenue column understates the operating performance in the middle years. On a constant-currency basis, growth was 23.3% in FY2022, 17.6% in FY2023, 20.9% in FY2024, 21.1% in FY2025 and 24.0% in FY2026. The gap is almost entirely Nigerian naira devaluation, which moved from 461.4 to 1,303.3 per dollar during FY2024 alone and reduced that year's reported revenue by $1,042m.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q1 FY2027 (to 30 Jun 2026)	$1,853m	5.4c	4.4c
Q4 FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	$1,748m	5.5c	5.5c
Q3 FY2026 (to 31 Dec 2025)	$1,685m	4.9c	4.9c
Q2 FY2026 (to 30 Sep 2025)	$1,567m	4.9c	4.9c
Q1 FY2026 (to 30 Jun 2025)	$1,415m	3.4c	3.4c
FY2026 full year	$6,415m	18.6c	18.6c

The gap between the two EPS measures in the June 2026 quarter is a $37m exceptional finance cost recognised on an in-principle settlement of a commercial dispute in a group subsidiary. It is the only exceptional item in the five quarters shown.

From the most recent release, covering the quarter to 30 June 2026: revenue $1,853m (up 31.0% reported, 21.1% constant currency); EBITDA $928m at a 50.1% margin; operating profit $627m; profit after tax $198m; net cash from operating activities $786m; capital expenditure $389m; net debt $5,739m at 1.7x leverage; and return on capital employed of 24.5%. Capital expenditure guidance for FY2027 is approximately $1.1bn, reaffirmed by the chief executive on 1 September 2026.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, September 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Share price	348.0p (8 September 2026)
Market cap	£12.63bn, approximately $17.10bn at GBPUSD 1.3541
Enterprise value	Approximately $22.8bn (market cap $17.10bn plus total debt $6.56bn less cash $0.88bn, per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet). Total debt here includes roughly $4.2bn of lease liabilities, which is why enterprise value is a third above market cap.
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	Approximately 24x on trailing twelve-month basic EPS of 19.6 US cents (FY2026 18.6c less Q1 FY2026 3.4c plus Q1 FY2027 4.4c). On the company's earnings-before-exceptional-items basis the trailing figure is 20.6 US cents, giving approximately 23x.
P/E (forward)	Approximately 13.7x on a forward EPS estimate of 25.4p. Airtel Africa does not publish an earnings forecast; it maintains a broker consensus page for readers who want to check the input.
P/S (TTM)	Approximately 2.5x (market cap $17.10bn divided by trailing twelve-month revenue of $6,853m, being FY2026 $6,415m less Q1 FY2026 $1,415m plus Q1 FY2027 $1,853m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	Approximately 6.7x (enterprise value $22.8bn divided by trailing twelve-month underlying EBITDA of $3,410m, being FY2026 $3,162m less Q1 FY2026 $680m plus Q1 FY2027 $928m). Airtel Africa discloses a single underlying EBITDA measure, so there is no second depreciation basis to choose between.
P/FCF	Approximately 7.6x (market cap $17.10bn divided by free cash flow of $2,261m; free cash flow equals trailing operating cash flow $3,413m less trailing capital expenditure $1,152m). Note that FY2027 capital expenditure is guided at approximately $1.1bn against $884m in FY2026, so this multiple is calculated on a lighter investment year than the one now under way.
Dividend yield	Approximately 1.5% on the FY2026 declared dividend of 7.10 US cents
52-week high	436.2p, set on 11 May 2026
52-week low	214.2p, set on 8 September 2025
Short interest (% of float)	No disclosed position. Airtel Africa does not appear in the FCA aggregated net short positions file (checked 8 September 2026), and the FCA short-selling register shows no individual net short position at or above the 0.5% public disclosure threshold. This means no single holder is short 0.5% or more; it does not mean short interest is zero.
Days to cover	Not published. The UK regime discloses individual positions above a threshold rather than an aggregate share count, so no days-to-cover figure exists for a company with no disclosed positions. Verify at the FCA short-selling register.
Net debt / EBITDA	1.7x reported at 30 June 2026; 0.5x on a lease-adjusted basis

Readers comparing these figures with charting tools should note that Airtel Africa reports in US dollars while its London shares are quoted in pence, so several data providers publish a price-to-sales ratio that divides a sterling market capitalisation by a dollar revenue figure. The multiples above convert consistently at the 8 September 2026 rate. For live technical levels see our Live Charts page.

7. What Are They Building

Data centres. Nxtra by Airtel, launched in December 2023, has two hyperscale facilities under construction: a 38 MW site in Lagos, Nigeria, begun in March 2024, and a 44 MW site at Tatu City near Nairobi, Kenya, where ground was broken in September 2025. The company expects the Kenyan facility to be the largest data centre in East Africa and to go live in the first quarter of 2027. It is designed at high density in anticipation of hosting the next generation of servers, and data-centre construction is an explicit call on the raised FY2027 capital budget.

Satellite direct-to-cell. Airtel Africa signed an enterprise and rural connectivity agreement with SpaceX in May 2025, extended it to Starlink Direct-to-Cell across all fourteen markets on 16 December 2025, completed data and messaging testing in Kenya in March 2026, and commercially launched Starlink Mobile in the Democratic Republic of Congo in August 2026 — the first commercial direct-to-cell deployment by an operator in Africa. Extension across the remaining markets is subject to regulatory approval.

Network. The group ended FY2026 with 3,116 operational 5G sites across six markets (Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and, added in the final quarter, Malawi), 98.5% of sites 4G-enabled, and 81,900 km of fibre, rising to 82,100 km by 30 June 2026. More than 3,250 new sites were rolled out in FY2026 and over 920 in the June quarter alone, a record first quarter. Data traffic grew 48.5% across FY2026 and 56.3% year on year in the June quarter.

Airtel Money and the planned listing. The mobile money unit is being prepared for a separate listing, with London confirmed as the preferred venue on 23 July 2026. Product build-out spans digital lending, savings, merchant payments, card-linked products and international remittance corridors, with Nigeria served separately through SmartCash Payment Service Bank. Minority investors including The Rise Fund, Qatar Holding and Mastercard hold 22.1% of the subsidiary.

Home broadband and enterprise. The home broadband base grew 86% in FY2026 at an average 195 GB per customer per month, carried by the 5G and fibre build. Airtel Business spans enterprise connectivity, Nxtra data centres, Cisco network-as-a-service and Airtel Ads, and is named in the chief executive's FY2026 statement as a priority for accelerated investment.

8. Competitive Landscape

Airtel Africa competes with much larger continental operators in most of its markets and is typically the second or third network rather than the incumbent. Market capitalisations below were re-checked live on 8 September 2026 and converted at that day's rates.

Peer	Market cap (September 2026)	Key 2025 metric
MTN Group (MTN.JO)	ZAR 363bn, approximately $22.7bn	H1 2026 service revenue R115.3bn, up 17.5% in constant currency, at a record 47.6% EBITDA margin across 317.7m customers in 19 markets. MTN Nigeria alone had 92.2m subscribers at a 55.9% EBITDA margin.
Vodacom Group (VOD.JO)	ZAR 291bn, approximately $18.2bn	FY2026, to 31 March 2026: 237.3m customers across 8 markets, up 26.0m; group service revenue R133.6bn, up 10.6%; EBITDA R62.6bn at a 37.4% margin.
Safaricom (SCOM, Nairobi)	KSh 1.51trn, approximately $11.7bn	FY2026, to 31 March 2026: group service revenue KES414.1bn, up 11.5%; net income KES99.7bn; 71.56m customers, up 25.4%. M-PESA revenue KES182.7bn, up 13.4%, across 43.69m customers — the mobile money benchmark Airtel Money is measured against.
Orange (ORA.PA)	EUR 40.7bn, approximately $47.3bn	The principal Francophone competitor, operating Orange Money across much of the same West and Central African footprint. No current-period operating metric was located from a primary source during this research; readers should verify at Orange investor relations.
Bharti Airtel (BHARTIARTL.NS)	INR 11.45trn, approximately $121.0bn	Controlling shareholder at approximately 79%, not a competitor. Q1 FY2027, to 30 June 2026: revenue INR 58,539 crore, up 18.4%; net profit INR 8,167 crore, up 37.3%; roughly 681m customers across 15 countries.

Two structural points sit behind the table. Airtel Africa is materially smaller than MTN on both revenue and customers, which matters because scale drives spectrum and tower economics. But its FY2026 group EBITDA margin of 49.3% sits above Vodacom's 37.4% and close to MTN's record 47.6%, and its mobile money margin of 50.8% is the closest thing on the continent to Safaricom's M-PESA franchise outside Kenya.

9. Insider Activity

The chief executive is Sunil Taldar, who signed both the FY2026 results of 8 May 2026 and the Q1 FY2027 trading update of 23 July 2026, having succeeded Olusegun Ogunsanya. The chief financial officer is Kamal Dua, appointed at the 2025 annual general meeting, and Gopal Vittal became non-executive chair on 9 July 2026 when Sunil Bharti Mittal retired from that role.

Two persons-discharging-managerial-responsibility announcements were made in 2026. Both are technical pledge releases by Indian Continent Investment Limited, a person closely associated with director Shravin Bharti Mittal, connected to the Bharti Airtel stake increase — not open-market dealing by executives.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Indian Continent Investment Ltd (PCA of Shravin Bharti Mittal)	22 Jun 2026	Release of pledge	595,204,251	£3.659	£2,177,852,354	Outside a trading venue
Indian Continent Investment Ltd (PCA of Shravin Bharti Mittal)	15 May 2026	Release of pledge	570,204,889	Not disclosed	Not disclosed	Outside a trading venue
Annika Poutiainen (Non-Executive Director)	30 Oct 2025	Sale	3,000	277.60p	£8,328	Open market
Cynthia Gordon (Non-Executive Director)	26 Sep 2025	Purchase	8,722	229.29p	£19,999	Open market
Paul Arkwright (Non-Executive Director)	12 Sep 2025	Purchase	10,000	227.77p	£22,777	Open market

No open-market purchases or sales by directors were disclosed during 2026. The most recent discretionary buying on record is the September and October 2025 activity above, when the shares traded between roughly 227p and 278p against 348p today. Separately, the company itself has been a persistent buyer, retiring 45m shares under the completed $100m programme and a further 10.2m shares for $46.6m in the June 2026 quarter.

10. Key Risks

• Currency translation: devaluation across the operating footprint has repeatedly overwhelmed operating performance. In FY2024 the naira alone cut reported revenue by $1,042m and EBITDA by $554m, turning 20.9% constant-currency growth into a 5.3% reported decline and producing $1,070m of foreign exchange losses. Management's disclosed sensitivity is roughly $45m to $47m of revenue and $21m to $22m of EBITDA per 1% of dollar appreciation. FY2026's strong reported figures reflect this running favourably, which is not a repeatable source of growth.
• Dollar lease liabilities against local-currency revenue: net debt of $5,739m includes roughly $4.2bn of lease obligations, a large share of them dollar-denominated tower leases arising from the 2024 contract renewals with ATC and IHS. The group has moved 93% of operating-company borrowings into local currency, but that mitigation does not extend to the lease stack, leaving a structural mismatch between where costs are fixed and where revenue is earned.
• Airtel Money listing and the associated put option: the Rise Fund and Mastercard hold a right to require Airtel Africa to repurchase their stakes in the mobile money subsidiary if a listing does not complete. The recorded liability was $515m at 31 March 2026, the lock-in has already been extended once, and the extended window elapsed on 31 July 2026. The listing has slipped from the first half of 2026 to the second half, and UK listing processes typically run six to twelve months.
• Nigeria concentration and regulation: Nigeria supplies 29.9% of regional revenue at the group's highest margin, so earnings are levered to a single regulator. Much of FY2026's Nigerian growth came from tariff adjustments permitted by the Nigerian Communications Commission in the March 2025 quarter, a benefit that lapped during the March 2026 quarter and cut Nigerian constant-currency growth from 47.4% for the year to 29.8% in the June 2026 quarter. The 900MHz spectrum licence had to be renewed for $37m in April 2026.
• Energy costs and physical network security: both the FY2026 and Q1 FY2027 statements warn that higher energy costs arising from recent geopolitical developments are expected to weigh on EBITDA margins in the near term, and the chief executive separately identified power supply and equipment vandalism, particularly in Nigeria, as major operating challenges on 1 September 2026. Diesel-dependent tower sites make this a direct margin exposure.
• Competition and pricing: MTN, Vodacom and Safaricom are all scaling faster in absolute terms. The pressure is visible inside Airtel's own numbers: Francophone Africa voice revenue fell 0.8% in constant currency in FY2026 as 16.3% customer growth was more than offset by ARPU decline driven by interconnect rate reductions.
• Controlling shareholder and free float: Bharti Airtel holds approximately 79% following the June 2026 share swap, the chair is appointed by nomination of the controlling shareholder under the 2019 relationship agreement, and Bharti's chairman has publicly indicated an ambition to move toward 90% if regulators allow. Minority holders face a thin float and limited independent influence over key board appointments.
• Political instability and tax: Francophone Africa, 29.0% of regional revenue, spans Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Gabon and the Republic of Congo. The group's effective tax rate of 40.1% sits well above the roughly 32% weighted-average statutory rate because of profit mix and withholding taxes on subsidiary dividends, a structural cash drag on upstreaming profits to London.

11. Recent Developments

• 01 Sep 2026 — Chief executive sets out a $1.1bn FY2027 investment programme. Sunil Taldar reaffirmed capital expenditure guidance of approximately $1.1bn and identified power supply and equipment vandalism, particularly in Nigeria, as the two major operating challenges, against network data traffic growing more than 50%.
• 31 Aug 2026 — Total voting rights confirmed at 3,629,635,395. Shares in issue stood at 3,635,772,073 with 6,136,678 held in treasury, reflecting the ongoing buyback.
• 16 Aug 2026 — Starlink Mobile launches commercially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Airtel became the first operator in Africa to launch a commercial satellite direct-to-cell service, with extension across the remaining thirteen markets subject to regulatory approval.
• 23 Jul 2026 — Q1 FY2027 results and a listing venue for Airtel Money. Revenue rose 31.0% to $1,853m at a 50.1% EBITDA margin, leverage fell to 1.7x, and London was confirmed as the preferred listing venue for the mobile money business.
• 09 Jul 2026 — Board transition at the annual general meeting. Sunil Bharti Mittal retired as chair, Gopal Vittal was appointed non-executive chair and Shravin Bharti Mittal became deputy chair. V.K. Viswanathan joined as an independent non-executive director on 22 July 2026.
• 22 Jun 2026 — Bharti Airtel lifts its stake to approximately 79%. Indian Continent Investment Limited transferred 595,204,251 shares, or 16.31%, to Bharti Airtel in a share-for-share swap valued at roughly $2.9bn. Both parties are Mittal-controlled, and the transaction was reported as not reducing the London or Lagos free float.
• 22 May 2026 — Third buyback programme launched. Up to 1% of issued share capital, with an initial Barclays tranche of up to $110m running no later than 27 November 2026. All repurchased shares are to be cancelled; $46.6m had been spent on 10.2m shares by 30 June 2026.
• 08 May 2026 — FY2026 results. Revenue of $6,415m, up 29.5% reported and 24.0% in constant currency; profit after tax of $813m, up 147.4%; leverage down to 1.8x; and a total dividend of 7.10 US cents, up 9.2%. The Airtel Money listing was pushed to the second half of 2026 on market conditions.
• 15 Apr 2026 — Nigerian spectrum licence renewed. The Nigerian Communications Commission confirmed renewal of Airtel Nigeria's 900MHz spectrum for $37m, payable in local currency and valid for ten years.
• 24 Mar 2026 — Second buyback programme completed. The final $55m tranche retired 18.7m shares, taking the $100m programme to 45m shares in total.
• 16 Dec 2025 — SpaceX Direct-to-Cell partnership signed. The agreement covers all fourteen markets, making Airtel the first African operator to commit to satellite direct-to-cell at scale. Successful data and messaging testing followed in Kenya in March 2026.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 14 Sep 2026 — ordinary trading resumes ahead of the half-year close on 30 September 2026, the period that will be reported at the end of October
• 30 Oct 2026 — H1 FY2027 results, covering the six months to 30 September 2026, confirmed on the company financial calendar. The interim dividend for FY2027 is expected to be declared alongside these results; the FY2026 interim was 2.84 US cents of a 7.10 cent full-year total
• 27 Nov 2026 — latest termination date for the current Barclays buyback tranche of up to $110m
• Expected Dec 2026 — ex-dividend date for the FY2027 interim dividend, based on the FY2026 timetable
• Expected Dec 2026 — target window for the Airtel Money listing, for which London has been confirmed as the preferred venue. Management has guided to the second half of the 2026 calendar year, subject to market conditions and regulatory approvals
• 29 Jan 2027 — Q3 FY2027 results, confirmed on the company financial calendar
• 13 May 2027 — FY2027 full-year results, covering the year to 31 March 2027, confirmed on the company financial calendar
• Expected Jul 2027 — annual general meeting, at which the appointment of Ernst and Young as auditor from the financial year ending 31 March 2028 is to be tabled. The 2025 and 2026 meetings were both held on 9 July

The put option held by The Rise Fund and Mastercard over their stakes in the mobile money subsidiary is not date-scheduled in the conventional sense: the extended lock-in window elapsed on 31 July 2026, so the $515m liability recorded at 31 March 2026 is now exercisable rather than deferred. No capital markets day has been announced. Readers tracking the macro backdrop against which these results land may find our Economic Calendar useful, and discussion of individual holdings continues in the ChartsView Forum.

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