Monday, July 21, 2014

#Idea Cellular's Q1 profit up by 57%

Idea Cellular
Idea Cellular  has reported a 57.2 percent jump in quarterly profit.Its consolidated first-quarter profit for FY15 was Rs.7.28 billion, up from  Rs.4.63 billion a year earlier. The company has reached 30% EBITDA margin this quarter. Continuing its upward trajectory, the company achieved 7.3% sequential quarterly revenue growth, on the back of 6.5% growth in Q4FY14. This quarter Idea delivered balanced growth with sequential quarterly voice  minutes expansion by 5.2% and ‘Average Realisation per Minute’ (ARPM) improvement of 3.3%.

During the quarter, the company carried 165.2 billion minutes on its network, registering 12.2% YoY growth and 32.5 billion Megabytes of Mobile Data on its 2G+3G platform, YoY growth of 136%, reaffirming strong consumer demand for brand Idea. The higher voice rate realization and jump in Data contribution to 11.5% of service revenue helped improve ‘Average Realisation per Minute’ (ARPM) by 1.5 paisa from 43.6p in 4FY14 to 45.1p in Q1FY15. The Value Added Services (VAS) contribution has improved sharply to 17.8% of overall service revenue.

The standalone EBITDA at Rs. 22,664 million grew faster by 14% on QoQ basis due to multiple drivers including scale benefit, better cost management and robust voice & data growth. The EBITDA margin has improved sequentially by 1.8% to 30%. Including Indus dividend receipt of Rs. 3,623 million, the company has delivered highest ever standalone ‘Profit After Tax’ (PAT) of Rs. 10,117 million, nearly double the previous quarter. Brand Idea continued its subscriber growth momentum with 3.2 million net new customer additions, now servicing 139 million quality base as ‘Average Revenue Per User’ (ARPU) improved to Rs. 181 (Rs. 173 in  Q4FY14) and MoU/Subscriber increased to 401 minute (397 minute in Q4FY14). The company continued its journey of strengthening its competitive market standing with VLR subscriber market share climbing to 17.7% (May 2014) and Revenue Market Share (RMS) @16.6% in Q4FY14, an increase of 0.9% compared to Q4FY13.

This quarter, Idea reversed the falling ‘Average Realisation per MB’ (ARMB) data rate trend by improvement of 1 paisa to 26.3p (vs 25.3p in Q4FY14). The explosive mobile data volume growth and ARMB improvement has helped company deliver 23.6% Mobile data revenue growth. The net Mobile data consumer base has risen in the quarter by 2.6 million to 27.9 million. The blended Data ARPU (2G+3G) also improved to Rs. 108 and Usage per Data subscriber is at 409 MB, among the highest in industry. Further, the company launched its 3G services in Punjab service area from May 29, 2014 extending Idea own ‘High Speed 3G Broadband’ Services presence to 11 service areas covering 72% of its subscriber base.