SBI Caps on Bharti Airtel: Robust execution is a boring upside catalyst but...

CLSA doesn't see tariff hikes in telecom sector anytime soon: Here’s why

"Execution was the reason for Dell to surpass Compaq in market value years ago despite the latter's far greater size, scale, and scope in the early 2000s. There have been some thoughts in the investor community over Bharti not having a bigger vision around the tech telecom space."

"We somewhat disagree as even globally telcos have remained more of a pipe and driving bulk of revenues from their access business and ability to move beyond the core has seen very limited success. Given this, we believe catering to new pockets of demand, digitizing customer experience, and addressing product gaps and content partnership in a way allows Bharti to be agile and well placed to address any new opportunity or catalyst that may emerge," says the report.

The report also talks about how the lack of tech investors doesn't mean a lack of vision. "Yes, it is true that Bharti so far has not raised money from global tech giants though it continues to work with most of them across products. This doesn’t necessarily imply that Bharti lacks tech vision; we believe the company’s digital focus across segments driven by the subscribers’ journey will see it benefiting from all aspects of digitization sooner rather than later. That said, unlike Jio, Bharti may not be focused on the Super App or in the online grocery business as it is not part of Bharti's core today, and the only way for Bharti to plug such gaps will be strategic partnerships," outlines SBI Caps.

Also read: Telecom ARPU poised for 'structural uptrend' via tariff hike, high data usage post COVID-19: Report

The other dimension to the entire tech investor debate has been the balance sheet and the leverage in the context of upcoming 5G spectrum auctions.

"Our view has been that Bharti with its leverage at 2.9x must consider reducing the leverage below 1x as it will soon be asked to make investments in 5G. While 50 percent of the overall debt may be from DoT, this debt requires regular servicing and such payments may coincide with the 5G capex and spectrum payments in 18-24 months from now."

"When it comes to fundraising, Bharti's track record has been stellar and that is something that has allowed it to stay relevant in the game and retain its market share. We are sure even Bharti can foresee the balance sheet issues with 5G and, as such, we believe it's a matter of time not a matter of disagreement. That said, we’d like to say that capital market and sentiments are external forces and the best time to raise money is when the markets are good and not when one needs it," it added.

The report though believes that the demand for Bharti's platform is evidently there and tech investors will benefit from investing with them.