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Aditya Birla Group company Idea Cellular has reported a 32 per cent increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 234.1 crore for the quarter ended June 31, 2012, against the same period last year. However, it reported a marginal drop in net profit on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
This muted performance was due to the introduction of the ‘Telecom Consumer Protection Regulation’ by TRAI (March 2012), additional depreciation during the quarter, tariff wars and forex losses.
There was a depreciation of Rs 48 crore in the April to June quarter. “The impact of sharp currency depreciation is reflected in the interest and finance cost with a forex loss of Rs 24.5 crore in this quarter as compared to a forex gain of Rs 13.5 crore in Q4-FY12,” Idea officials said.
“Due to a cash profit of Rs 1,050 crore, the net debt went down to Rs 11,500 crore from Rs 12,000 crore,” said Mr Akshaya Moondra, Chief Financial Officer, Idea Cellular.
Revenues were up 21.7 per cent at Rs 5,503.7 crore at the end of the June 2012 quarter (Rs 4,520.72 crore). There was a slowdown in sequential revenue growth because of the drop in the Average Realisation Per Minute (ARPM) by 2.3 per cent to 41.2 paise from 42.2 paise (qoq). Industry growth was likely to be muted in the first half of the financial year, officials of the company said.
Idea had a net gain of 3.5 million customers as of July 10 through mobile number portability. The company’s active 3G subscriber base expanded to 3.1 million.
Idea has seen a growth in the “non-voice revenue” or the Value Added Services (VAS) which contributed to 14.5 per cent of the service revenue in Q1-FY13 against 14.3 per cent in March 2012. The blended ARPU fell to Rs 156 in the April to June 2012 quarter from Rs 160 in the previous quarter.
The telecom provider now has 117 million subscribers. Minutes of usage were flat at 131 billion minutes compared with 124 billion minutes in the March 2012 quarter.
The Idea stock closed at Rs 80.40, down 1.65 per cent from its previous close on the BSE.
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