Telecom stocks back in favour, outperform Sensex

Beaten down telecom stocks Bharti Airtel Ltd and Vodafone Idea Ltd seem to have turned a corner, outperforming the benchmark indices this year, as price hikes and large investments in the sector have improved the outlook for the sector.

So far this year, as covid-19 led disruptions led to massive sell-off, the benchmark Sensex is down 17% while the BSE Telecom index has gained around 15%.

This is a significant departure from the trend in the last two years, which saw telecom stocks underperform the benchmark. In 2018, the BSE Telecom index had lost 41% while Sensex was up around 6%.