Idea Cellular has posted impressive revenue and profit growth during the third quarter. 2G and 3G mobile data contributed to the surge.
The Aditya Birla group firm posted 9.4 percent annual growth in Total Minutes of Use and 107.6 percent in data volume.
Idea Cellular said its third quarter revenue rose 18.6 percent to Rs 6,613 crore from the year-ago quarter. Its net profit grew 105 percent to Rs 467 crore. In the third quarter, Idea Cellular’s mobility business contributed Rs 6536 crore (Rs 5476 crore) revenue, ILD Rs 103 crore (Rs 113 crore) and tower business Rs 618 crore (Rs 646 crore).
The telecom service provider added 18 million incremental subscribers (on VLR) in calendar year 2013, now serving 129 million subscribers.
Idea expanded its presence to over 344,000 towns and villages with a Capex (capital spending) of Rs 1,020 crore in the third quarter. There will be no change in Capex during the current fiscal.
The ARPU increased to Rs 169 from Rs 158 in Q3 FY13.
Idea Cellular mobile subscriber churn fell by 1.2 percent to 5.6 percent over Q3 FY13.
EBITDA grew 37.7 percent, improving EBITDA margin by 4.0 percent to 27.4 percent mainly on the strength of improved rate realisation (ARPM), cost optimisation and scale benefits.
The VAS contribution increased to 16.1 percent of service revenue from 14.6 percent in Q3 FY13. This is despite steep decline in non data VAS’ service contribution from 8.9 percent in Q3FY13 to 6.6 percent in Q3FY14.
Idea Cellular’s data revenue as a percent of service revenue improved 3.8 percent to 9.5 percent.
Mobile data user base has dipped to 25.5 million (2G+3G).
Idea Cellular’s mobile data ARPU has improved to Rs 91 in Q3 FY14 from Rs 52 in Q3 FY13.
Average Realised Rate per MB (ARMB) fell by 1.3 paisa from 31.0p/MB (Q3FY13) to 29.6p/MB (Q3FY14).
Idea Cellular has added 4.6 million new 3G users in 2013. Its total with 3G user base (Voice and/ Data) reached 8.7 million.
The 3G user mobile data ARPU is steady at Rs 112 per month.
