How may Bharti Airtel and Voda Idea stocks perform in the near term?

Despite an on-going recovery in the telecom sector, analysts believe the stock performance of Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel may remain sluggish in the near-term. Their shares have cracked around 8-14% in the past three months as the benchmark Nifty50 shed 7.5%. Going forward, likely heavy investment in the upcoming 5G auction, coupled with flat subscriber growth, may act as overhangs in the near-term.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s data showed that industry-wide active subscriber base dipped by 7.8 million month-on-month in April 2022. While Bharti Airtel lost 3.1 million customers, Reliance Jio lost 0.1 million, and Vodafone Idea 3.8 million. Meanwhile, the industry-wide mobile broadband subscribers remained flat at 760 million.