Vodafone Idea reveals Capex, revenue and Opex in Q3

Vodafone Idea (Vi), India’s third largest telecom operator, has revealed its Capex, revenue and Opex for the July-September quarter of 2022.
Akshaya Moondra, CEO of Vodafone Idea, said: “We reported fifth consecutive quarter of revenue growth and 4G subscriber additions. Such performance is primarily driven by the increase in 4G subscriber base on the back of superior data and voice experience offered by Vi GIGAnet.”

Vodafone Idea’s Capex spend for the quarter stands at Rs 12.1 billion vs Rs 8.4 billion in Q1FY23.

The focus of Vodafone Idea in the upgrading of core and transmission network. Vodafone Idea has shut down ~19,000 3G sites and added ~8,500 4G sites. Vodafone Idea’s overall broadband site count stood at 444,228 as of September 30, 2022. Vodafone Idea has deployed ~74,300 TDD sites in addition to the deployment of ~13,800 Massive MIMO sites and ~13,200 small cells.

Vodafone Idea expanded LTE 900 presence in 14 circles at multiple locations, including through dynamic spectrum refarming, to improve customer experience. Vodafone Idea’s 4G network covers over 1 billion Indians as of September 30, 2022.

Vodafone Idea’s ARPU improved to Rs 131, up 2 percent QoQ vs Rs 128 in Q1FY23. On a YoY basis, ARPU witnessed growth of 19.5 percent aided by tariff hikes and migration of subscribers to unlimited plans.

Vodafone Idea’s subscriber base declined to 234.4 million vs 240.4 million in Q1FY23.

Vodafone Idea added 1.5 million 4G customers in Q2. Vodafone Idea’s 4G subscriber base now stands at 120.6 million. Data usage per broadband customer reached ~15.0 GB/month with the total data traffic witnessing sequential growth of 5.4 percent. Blended subscriber churn for the quarter was higher at 4.3 percent vs 3.5 percent in Q1FY23.

Vodafone Idea has 8,005.2 MHz of spectrum across difference frequency bands out of which 7,975.2 MHz spectrum is liberalised and can be used towards deployment of any technology. This includes the recently (July 2022 auction) acquired mid band 5G spectrum (3300 MHz band) in its 17 priority circles, mmWave 5G spectrum (26 GHz band) in 16 circles and incremental 4G spectrum in 3 circles of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab — for Rs 187.9 billion during the spectrum auction.

Vodafone Idea has presence in over 184,750 unique locations and has over 444,200 broadband (3G+4G) sites. The company has nearly 291,900 km of OFC including own built, IRU OFC and excluding overlapping routes. The site expansion, coupled with the deployment of TDD sites, DSR, Small Cells and Massive MIMO has enabled further capacity enhancement.

Vodafone Idea reported revenue of Rs 106.1 billion, registering 2 percent increase QoQ and 12.8 percent growth YoY. EBITDA for the quarter was Rs. 41.0 billion.