Monday, October 20, 2014

#IdeaCellular posted 69 percent rise in Q2 profits

Idea Cellular has delivered excellent ‘Profit After Tax’ (PAT) at Rs. 7,794 million, nearly double the Q2FY14 PAT of Rs. 3,984 million.The standalone EBITDA of Rs. 22,394 million grew by 29.5% on YoY basis due to multiple drivers including scale benefit, better cost management and robust net subscriber addition, voice minutes and data volume growth. Idea improved its EBITDA margin by 2.2% during last one year to 29.6%. Including Indus dividend receipt of Rs. 1,026 million.
During this quarter, the company carried 162.5 billion minutes on its network, less pronounced seasonal quarterly decline of 1.7%, in comparison to 5.8% minutes decline in Q2 vs Q1FY14. In line with the emerging digital  connectivity demand, Mobile Data volume exploded to 39.4 billion MB on its 2G+3G platform @ 21.3% QoQ growth, reaffirming consumer preference for brand Idea.
While the Voice rate realization was under  pressure, but 22.5% quarterly jump in Mobile Data revenue, contributing 14.0% to service revenue, helped Idea improve ‘Average Realisation per Minute’ (ARPM) by 0.8paisa from 45.1p in Q1FY15 to 45.9p in Q2FY15. The ‘Value Added Service‘ (VAS) contribution has improved sharply to 21.1% of service revenue, a gain of 4.9% over last one year.
With 4.6 million net new customer additions in the quarter, now it is servicing 143.6 million EoP customer base and ‘Average Revenue Per User’ (ARPU) improved to Rs. 176 (Rs. 164 in Q2FY14) and MoU/Subscriber increased to 384 minutes (368 minutes in Q2FY14). The company continued its journey of strengthening its competitive market standing with VLR subscriber market share climbing to 17.8% (August 2014) and Revenue Market Share (RMS) in Q1FY15 @ 17.1%, an increase of 0.9% compared to Q1FY14. Idea managed to maintain the mobile data ‘Average Realisation per MB’ (ARMB) at 26.5paisa (vs 26.3p in Q1FY15). The explosive Mobile Data volume growth and steady ARMB has helped Mobile data quarterly revenue cross Rs. 10 billion mark. The Mobile Data consumer base has risen in this quarter by 3.1 million to 30.9 million. The blended data ARPU (2G+3G) has also improved to Rs. 119 and ‘Usage per data subscriber’ is now at 447 MB. The 3G (Voice+Data) customer grew steadily to 13.3 million but still represents only 9.3% of Ideas’ total subscriber base. In comparison, the 3G phone penetration among Idea subscribers is improving and over 17% of Idea users own high speed 3G devices.