Reliance Jio on Friday reported a mixed set of numbers for the July-September quarter, with revenue, profit and Ebidta largely in line with estimates, but slipping sharply on the net subscriber front where it saw a decline of 11.1 million users compared to the preceding quarter. Average revenue per user was much ahead of estimate.
The net profit increased 2.11% sequentially to Rs 3,728 crore. Jio’s revenue during the quarter was up 4.35% at Rs 19,777 crore, while Ebitda was up 4.52% at Rs 9,294 crore. The company’s Ebitda margin expanded to 47% compared to 46.9% during the preceding quarter.
Average revenue per user (Arpu) for the quarter at Rs 143.6 was higher as compared to the preceding quarter when it stood at Rs 138.4.
On the Apru front, the company beat analysts estimate of around Rs 140.
On other operating metrics, Jio’s data traffic surged by nearly 13% sequentially to 23,000,000 million MB on high data consumption. Data usage per customer per month was also up a sharp 12.8% quarter-on-quarter to 17.6 GB.
Jio’s voice volume growth, however, slowed down during the quarter and grew 2.8% q-o-q at 10,90,000 million minutes. Usage per customer at 840 minutes per month increased by 2.6% as compared to 818 minutes per month in Q1 FY22.
Jio saw a spike in churn of low-end subscribers due to Covid, which led to a net subscriber decline of 11.1 million in the reported quarter. In the preceding three quarters, the company had significantly improved the monthly churn, which was down to 0.95% in Q1FY22.
Total customer gross addition stood at 35.6 million, which was higher as compared to 27.6 million in the April-June quarter. The total subscriber base stood at 429.5 million at the end of September.
Commenting on the performance, Mukesh Ambani, chairman, Reliance Industries, said, “Jio, our digital services business continues to transform the broadband market in India and set new benchmarks for the industry”.