Idea Cellular Q4 profit up by 60%

NEW DELHI: Telecom operator Idea Cellular has posted consolidated profit after tax of Rs 941.77 crore, up by 59.7 percent for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2015.

The company had posted a profit after tax of Rs 589.77 crore, in the a year-ago period.

It said that due to the changes in the TRAI Interconnect (IUC) regulations effective March 1, 2015, the results for this quarter and financial year 2014-15 are not comparable to earlier quarters, financial years.

Going ahead, the company's revenue stood at Rs 8,422.51 crore as against Rs 7,043.82 crore in the corresponding period a year ago.

“Idea continues its enviable track record of being amongst the fastest growing large Indian Mobile operators with 19.1% growth in gross revenue in FY15 at Rs. 3,15,548 million, nearly 1.8 times the wireless industry revenue growth rate (CY14),” the company said.

“The company has clocked 23.5 million net VLR subscriber addition in FY15 against 17.7 million net VLR addition in FY14, now servicing a strong 161.4 million quality consumers across India, a statement said.

The voice rate realisation remained under pressure for the third successive quarter; fell sharply by 7.1% to 33.9p/minute from 36.5p/minute (Q4FY14) but the elasticity of demand compensated rate decline with 16.3% minute growth in FY15 v/s FY14.

“The company doubled its 3G data subscriber base, adding 7.3 million new 3G users in last one year, servicing overall 14.5 million 3G data consumers. During the year, 3G Data volume exploded by nearly 2.3 times; from 13.1 billion Megabyte in Q4FY14 to 30.7 billion Megabyte in Q4FY15. To support the exponential Voice and Mobile Data growth, Idea capex spend for FY15 is Rs. 40.5 billion (excluding spectrum); adding 7,589 GSM sites and 8,910 3G cell sites and over 11,000 Km of high capacity optical fibre,” the company said in a statement.

Inspite of higher network expansion and cost inflationary pressures, Idea standalone EBITDA grew faster in FY15 at 33% and stands at Rs 97,679 million, helping margin improve by 3.2% to 31%.

Similarly, the strong revenue growth this quarter translated into Q4FY15 standalone EBITDA margin improvement of 2.1% at 33.1% (vs Q3FY15) and sequential quarterly growth of 11.9%.

“The double bottom line drivers of Voice and Data business, scale benefits and optimization of cost has helped Idea improve its standalone Profit After Tax (PAT) by 93.9% from Rs 17,932 million (Incl. Indus dividend of Rs 838 million) in FY14 to Rs. 34,772 million (Incl. Indus dividend of Rs. 6,250 million) this financial year,” according to the statement.

In the recently concluded March 2015, DoT sponsored Spectrum Auction, Idea won 79.4 MHz of spectrum, successfully ensuring continuity of services for its 107.6 million customers (68% of total customer base) in nine service areas with licenses expiring in December 2015/April 2016.

Additionally, the company has acquired spectrum and the ability to launch 4G services on 1800 MHz spectrum in service areas of Tamil Nadu (incl. Chennai) and Orissa, expanding Idea 4G 1800 MHz contiguous spectrum footprint to 10 service areas covering most of its strategic markets with ability to offer LTE services to 61% of Idea existing revenue.