Jio Platforms Net Profit in Q1 rises 45% Year on Year

In a press statement, Jio Platforms said that its net profit increased 44.9% Y-o-Y in the first quarter of the current fiscal. The company said that strong user additions and higher data usage pushed the profits.

Jio Platforms Register a Stellar Year

The statement said that Jio Platform's consolidated net profit stood at ₹3,651 crore. The same stood at ₹3,510 crore at March end, and ₹2,519 crore a year ago. At the same time, quarterly revenue rose to ₹18,952 crore from ₹18,278 crore in the Jan-March period. More importantly, the company's ARPU shrunk slightly to ₹138.4 from ₹138.2 in the previous quarter. On the upside, the company added 14.4 million net subscribers; Jio Platforms also said that Reliance Jio closed the quarter with 440.6 million users.

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, RIL, said, "Jio has posted yet another record quarterly performance with industry-leading operating metrics. I am thankful to Jio’s family of loyal subscribers whose number has grown further during the quarter, consolidating its position as India’s No. 1 provider of digital connectivity and services". The company also added, " saw good traction in subscriber addition and data usage, unaffected by the COVID second wave".

Average wireless data consumption per user per month rose to 15.6 GB from 13.3 GB in the fiscal fourth quarter. Average voice consumption, though, fell to 818 minutes per user per month from 823 minutes in the previous quarter.

Further, JPL’s first quarter EBITDA margin remained at 46.9%. The same for Reliance Jio remained at 48%.

Jio Platforms' Future Outlook

Jio strategy head Anshuman Thakur said that EBITDA margins were steady even though the telco was expanding. The company has also launched a JioPhone offer to push the country’s 2G users into its own 4G-only network. The telco did the same in order to hit its targeted 500 million users. The telco also offered free minutes to disadvantaged users during the second wave of COVID-19.

“Yet we managed to hold on to the EBITDA margin…and net profit grew 44.9% year on year,” Thakur said. He further said that the spectrum it acquired in the March spectrum auction and co-owns with Bharti Airtel has developed network capacity. Now, the telco can onboard an additional 200 million customers on its network, Thakur said.

He added that the spectrum the company has acquired from the auctions and Bharti Airtel have created capacity to onboard the next 200 million subscribers on Jio’s network. "Network capacity and device strategy is in place for the next 200 million Jio customers".

What's more, RIL also announced the JioPhone Next, claiming it to be the world's most affordable 4G smartphone. The telco remains positive to draw demand and meet the same. Further, the company has been working on its FTTH and digital platforms. Thakur said, "while there have been challenges and delay and incremental monetization of FTTH and digital platforms, we see a long runway ahead of us, both on the mobility side with what we have done with our network capacity and devices, 5G rollout, and even on the fibre-to-home and enterprise side where the demand has been extremely strong".

The telco also has entered a partnership with Google to use its Cloud in its 5G network deployment. On that, Jio President Kiran Thomas said, "Jio and Google will collaborate to bring a portfolio of 5G edge computing solutions across gaming, healthcare, education and video entertainment". He added that JioFiber has 3 million subscribers, with average household using around 300 GB data per month.