Aditya Birla Group company Idea Cellular reported a marginal 3% increase in its net profit at R274.5 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2010, as compared to R266.6 crore in same quarter of the previous year, even as the company’s subscriber base grew 40% year-on-year and minutes of usage (MoU) jumped 49%.
The company’s total subscriber base at the end of the March quarter grew to 89.5 million, and MoU, to 1,01960 million. Rivals Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications had posted 31% and 68% drop in year-on-year net profit for the year ended March, respectively.
Idea?s revenues for the fourth quarter increased 26% to R4,234.7 crore as against R3,347 crore in the March 2010 quarter. ?We carried 362.6 billion minutes during FY11,? said Himanshu Kapania, MD, Idea Cellular
?We are also the third largest wireless operator in the country with a revenue market share of 13.6% in Q4 FY11. We added over 9.6 million active subscribers during the quarter, taking the visitor location register (VLR) subscriber base to 83.3 million,? he added. However, Idea’s average realised rate (ARR) declined to 40.6 paise compared to 41.8 paise in the last quarter.
?Overcapacity in the sector has not gone yet. Tariff competition has led to 2.9% drop in our ARR,? said Kapania.
However, for the full year ended March 31, 2011, Idea’s profit slipped 5.7% to R898.7 crore as compared to R953.9 crore last year. Its revenues for the financial year 2010-2011 stood at R15,503.2 crore against R12,447 crore in FY2009-10. The company?s shares on the BSE closed at R71.95, down 0.28% on Monday.
Idea’s Ebitda for the March quarter stood at R1075.2 crore with a consolidated Ebitda margin of 25.4%. It capitalised an interest of R124 crore during Q4 against the payment for 3G spectrum fees.
?Our Ebitda margin in the 13 established circles, which contribute about 89% to our revenues, is 27.9%… We continued to invest in new circles and yet generated cash profit,? he said.