Reliance Jio, a telecom operator owned by Mukesh Ambani, posted revenue of Rs 8,404 crore (+3.6 percent) with net profit of Rs 510 crore in Q4, and Rs 23,714 crore revenue and Rs 723 crore profit in fiscal 2017-18.
Reliance Jio, which has 187 million 4G subscribers, started offering free telecom services in September 2016, as part of the strategy to take on Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone. In the last few quarters, Reliance Communications, Telenor, Tata Teleservices, Videocon and Aircel lost considerable business or exited.
Reliance Jio reported EBITDA of Rs 2,694 crore (+2.5 percent) with EBITDA margin of 37.8 percent (–1.1 percent) and EBIT of Rs 1,495 crore (+4.1 percent) in Q4.
With a subscriber base of 186.6 million, Reliance Jio said it achieved the lowest churn in the Indian telecom industry at 0.25 percent per month.
The main concern for Reliance Jio is low ARPU of Rs 137.1 per subscriber per month given the fact that the company is selling 4G data to its customers. Reliance Jio said total wireless data traffic during the quarter reached 506 crore GB (+17.4 percent). Voice traffic during the fourth quarter was 37,218 crore minutes.
Reliance Jio posted EBITDA of Rs 6,734 crore with EBITDA margin of 33.4 percent and EBIT of Rs 3,158 crore in fiscal 2017-18 ended March 31, 2018
“The strong financial results of Jio in a competitive market environment demonstrates the robustness of the Jio business model and ability to offer the most value to our customers and partners. Jio has demonstrated that it can scale and sustain its strong financial performance,” said RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani.
Reliance Jio has achieved its strong subscriber growth with net addition during the quarter of 26.5 million as against 21.5 million in the previous quarter. The company said gross adds at 27.9 million and churn of 1.4 million implying the lowest industry churn rate at 0.25 percent per month.
Jio’s mobile data subscribers demonstrate high activity level with average data consumption per user per month of 9.7 GB and average voice consumption of 716 minutes per user per month. Jio subscribers use over 240 crore hours of video per month on the 4G network.
Reliance Jio has achieved positive net profit in the first year of commercial operations. The mobile operator said its strong operating margins are due to business efficiencies and scalable business model.
