Idea Cellular Q4 profit falls 39% at Rs 575 crore

Telecom operator Idea Cellular's net profit declined by 39% to Rs 575.6 crore in the last quarter of 2015-16 due to a spike in finance costs. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 941.77 crore in the January-March quarter of 2014-15 financial year.

Revenue of the company, however, increased by 12.6% to Rs 9,483.85 crore during the reported quarter, compared to Rs 8,422.51 crore in the same period of 2014-15. Net debt of the company as on March 31, 2016, stood at Rs 38,750 crore, including all deferred payment liability to be paid to government for spectrum purchased in auctions.

Idea Cellular reported over two-fold jump in finance charges at Rs 808.05 crore in January-March 2015-16, from Rs 291.65 crore in the year-ago period.

For year ended March 31, 2016, the company's consolidated net profit declined by 3.5% Rs 3,079.93 crore from Rs 3,192.91 crore a year ago. The consolidated annual revenue of Idea for financial year 2015-16 increased by 13.9% to Rs 35,980.95 crore from Rs 31,570.89 crore in previous fiscal.

The company realisation of revenue from voice calls and data per minute also declined sharply.
Idea reported voice realised rate of 33.3 paise per minute compared to 33.9 paise a minute it registered in same quarter a year ago. The realisation of revenue from data service declined to 22.9 paise per megabyte from 44.8 paise per MB during quarter under review.

With addition of 4G services, the company recorded mobile data consumption at 82.2 billion MB in the fourth quarter of financial year 2016 and 298 billion MB throughout the fiscal on its network.

"With reduced consumer promotions this quarter, the subscriber and volume growth was slower," Idea said. The company could add 1.9 million net quarterly subscriber addition taking its total customer base to 183.8 million at the end of March 2016. 

Idea reported had 44 million data customers as of March 31, 2016. Of these over 680,000 customers were using 4G services and 22.9 million 3G data customers.

Idea in a statement said that primary reasons that impacted mobile industry growth in financial year 2016 were reduction of interconnection charges by telecom regulator TRAI, reduction in upper cap for national roaming and SMS charges, slower uptake for mobile broadband services against supply of 3G and 4G launches across country.

In 2015-16, Idea said that it has more than doubled its past three years average capital expenditure spends with network investment of Rs 7,770 crore. During the reported fiscal, the company integrated highest ever 48,878 mobile sites (14,466 sites for 2G Sites, 19,769 for 3G sites and 14,643 for 4G) reaching a total of 191,536 sites. It also expanded its optical fibre coverage by doubling its annual roll out to 22,100 kilometre compared to 11,400 km in FY'15) reaching to 115,500 km.