Shares of Bharti Airtel were trading flat in afternoon session today ahead of telco set to announce its Q4 numbers later in the day.

Airtel stock has been gaining for the last 3 days and has risen 4.23 per cent in the period. The stock trades above its 30, 50, 150 as well as 200-day SMA.

Against the previous close of Rs 331.10, Bharti Airtel stock opened just 0.60 up to Rs 331.70 and plunged to day's low of Rs 326, down by 1.35 per cent. The stock, however, recovered from the lows to the intraday high of Rs 336 by the afternoon session.

At 2:22 pm,  the stock was trading 0.18% lower at Rs 333.20 on BSE and down 0.36% at Rs 330 on NSE. The stock is trading close to its 52-week high of Rs 383.81 hit on May 4, 2018.

A total of 3.15 lakh and 98.79 lakh shares are changing hands on BSE and NSE, respectively.

In December last year, the company's net profit plunged 72% in the fiscal third quarter, from Rs 306 cr a year earlier to Rs 86 cr, whereas the revenue grew a marginal 1 per cent to Rs 20,519 cr over Rs 20,319 cr in the corresponding quarter a year ago.

Meanwhile, ratings agency Kotak Institutional Equities expects Bharti Airtel to post a modest 1 per cent sequential uptick in revenues at Rs 10,300 crore.

According to a report by the rating firm, "Kotak expects company's consolidated EBITDA to decline 2.5 per cent QoQ and 13 per cent YoY to Rs 6,060 crore despite expected QoQ stability in India wireless EBITDA".

Similarly, Motilal Oswal expects Bharti Airtel to post a loss of Rs 720 crore, with a consolidated revenue growth of 1% quarter-on-quarter.

The revenue returns as well as average revenue per user (ARPU) of Bharti Airtel and other telecom operators has been shrinking since the launch of low-cost tariff plans by Reliance Jio, owned by Reliance Industries.

Following the entry of Reliance Jio in September 2016, many topline operators suffered instability in revenue models as tariff war forced them (including the rivals) to drop their rates, additionally affecting their profit margins.

In another update, Airtel has revamped several of its postpaid plans to attract new subscribers. Airtel has discontinued Rs 399 postpaid plan and replaced it with the Rs 499 plan. Similarly, Rs 999 Airtel postpaid plan has been upgraded for a total of five connections along with benefits such as a 150GB data and unlimited voice calling benefits. Airtel has also revised the Rs 1,599 plan with unlimited data and voice calling. The New Airtel postpaid plans offer free subscription to Amazon Prime, Netflix, and ZEE5.

(Edited by Rupa Burman Roy)