India’s third largest telecom operator, Idea Cellular, is most likely to post a net loss of Rs 448 crore, largely impacted by tariff war triggered by Reliance Jio and the recent note ban, as compared to reported a net profit of Rs 91.5 crore for the previous quarter, according to a report in the Economic Times.
This is going to be the first ever net loss for the Aditya Birla Group Company’s since its listing. The telco is scheduled to report its December quarter earnings on Monday.
An ET Poll suggested that the telecom operator’s total revenues are likely to contract 5.74 per cent on a sequential basis to Rs 8,794.8 crore, against Rs 9300 crore in the previous quarter. The poll also showed that Idea Cellular’s consolidated Ebitda may slip 23.79 per cent on a sequential basis to Rs 2,386.90 crore, against Rs 3,132.2 crore in the previous quarter.
Notably, the telco’s data may also decline 17 per cent sequentially, while voice revenue per minute (RPMs) may decline by 6 per cent due to an unfavourable mix of incoming and outgoing calls, the poll showed.
Arpu or average revenue per user is expected to go down by 8 per cent on a sequentially basis to Rs 159 in the December quarter, as compared to Rs 173 reported in the September quarter.
Idea Cellular recently said that it was planning to raise Rs 500 crore from the market by selling corporate bonds or issuance of unsecured Redeemable Non-Convertible Debentures (“NCDs”). It had earlier raised Rs 1,000 crore and Rs 1,500 crore through the same route.
The telco previously said that it will expand 4G services to nine circles to take their wireless broadband footprint to 20 circles by March 2017 . It plans to add nearly 57,000 sites this year to enable the launch of 4G in circles of UP West, UP East, Gujarat, Mumbai, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Assam and Jammu & Kashmir where spectrum was acquired in the auctions ended last month.
Idea had said that its 4G footprint, by the end of this year, will cover our key 20 circles contributing 94% of the company revenue and 90% of industry revenue.
