Shares of Bharti Airtel edged higher in morning trade on January 9 after CLSA issued a buy call on the stock. The global research firm has initiated a buy call on the telecom stock and raised its target price to Rs 1,040 per share, representing a 30% upside from the current market price, CNBC-TV18 reported.

Bharti Airtel was trading at Rs 812.75 on the BSE at 9:35 am, up Rs 16.15 or 2.03%. It touched an intraday high of Rs 813.50 and an intraday low of Rs 801.30.

The broker sees Bharti Airtel as the top performer in India’s mobile business, with strong operating cash flow and rising return on capital employed (RoCE). It forecasts Bharti Airtel to post a 16%/22% CAGR in mobile revenue/EBITDA in India by FY25.

CLSA expects Bharti Airtel to offer 5G benefits to mobile and the company’s enterprise offerings. It also expects a massive cash flow of $28 billion to drive deleveraging to 1x EBITDA. “Cash flow will drive pre-tax RoCE to 18% by FY25,” the brokerage said.

The country’s telecom subscriber base fell by 117 crores in October as Vodafone Idea lost many mobile customers in October, TRAI said, according to a report by the industry regulator.

“The number of telephone subscribers in India decreased from 1,171.92 million at the end of September 2022 to 1,170.45 million at the end of October 2022, thus representing a monthly decline of 0.12%,” TRAI said in its October 2022 subscriber report.