The Aditya Birla Group's telecom arm Idea Cellular today reported a robust 59.68 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 941.77 crore on a consolidated basis for the March quarter, driven by rise in revenue through volume growth on both voice and data fronts.
Total revenues moved up to Rs 8,422.51 crore in the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2015, from Rs 7,043.82 crore in the year-ago period and Rs 8,017.47 crore in the preceding December quarter.
Idea Managing Director Himanshu Kapania told reporters the growth was driven by a healthy subscriber expansion which came in at 9.1 million in the last quarter as against 8.1 million in the third quarter, 2014-15, an 8.4 per cent rise in minutes to 185 billion and an 18.3 per cent increase in data usage at 84.5 billion MB.
He said the aggressive competition in the sector -- with up to eight companies fighting it out on the voice side and up to five on the data -- continues to be a challenge, which is affecting realised rates. There was a 4.8 per cent decline in voice rate in the March quarter and 4.5 per cent on data front.
Hinting at the improving quality of subscribers, Kapania said the average revenue per user improved to Rs 179 from Rs 173 in the year-ago period.
The private telecom operator's pre-tax profit margin improved by 3.2 percentage points to 31 per cent, which was attributed to the increased scale of operations.
Idea said there was a Rs 105-crore negative impact on the revenues because of the changes in regulation governing the interconnect user charges and Chief Financial Officer Akshaya Moondra said aggressive play by smaller operators can result in this becoming an issue for concern.
