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Uninor, Indian arm of Norway’s Telenor Group, has posted a 44 per cent rise in gross revenue of Rs 930.6 crore in its first quarter ended March 31, on back of strong customer acquisitions. A 13 per cent rise in average revenues per user (ARPU), a metric to gauge the financial strength of a telecom operator, also helped the GSM operator’s revenue.
The company, which provides pre-paid services across six circles, had posted revenues of Rs 645.1 crore during the same quarter a year ago.
The company reduced its EBITDA loss (operating loss) to Rs 81.8 crore during the quarter under review, compared with a loss of Rs 164.7 crore a year ago.
“This is a 50 per cent improvement, compared with the first quarter of last year,” said Morten Karlsen Sorby, Uninor’s nominated Chief Executive Officer.
“We have staged our investments in a manner that we demonstrate the success of our business model and then look to invest the next tranche. After achieving the target for the first round of investments by achieving break-even last year, we have now made a fresh investment of Rs 500 crore towards a 30 per cent expansion of the network and retail footprint,” said Sorby.
The business performance comes on the back of a “strong customer acquisitions” that helped Uninor achieve a 20 per cent market share in its circle during the quarter. The company has operations across Uttar Pradesh (West), Uttar Pradesh (East), Bihar (including Jharkhand), Maharashtra and Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.
“Every fifth new mobile subscription in these six circles during the quarter was acquired by Uninor,” Sorby said, adding, its ARPUs rose to Rs 106 in March quarter from the same period a year ago.
The operator, which is readying to roll out services in Assam, had a total of 35.6 million users as of March-end.
“While the voice business to play a major role in our business performance this year. We are looking to double our internet revenues and percentage of internet users on our subscriber base within 2014,” Sorby added.
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