Reliance Jio, Mukesh Ambani-led telecom operator, is likely to register a loss of Rs 19,600 crore in 2017-18 and Rs 11,500 crore in 2018-19, according to a forecast made by financial service company IIFL.
The agency also expects Reliance Jio to achieve PBT (profit before tax) break-even only by FY22 (2021-22). A separate report from CLSA said that Reliance Jio could reach well over 100 million paid subscribers by March 2018. Jio’s new three-month promotion for high ARPU Prime customers aims to smooth the shift from free to paid services and further cement high data usage habits, it said
“With 15 days left for the Prime membership enrollment deadline, Jio may cross 80 million Prime subscribers by 15 April and could end March 2018 with over 100m subscribers (CLSA: 70m by March 2018),” CLSA said in a statement.
Reliance Jio had last week announced the Jio Summer Surprise plan, actually extending the free 4G services for another three months. The telecom operator also informed that over 72 million users opted for the Jio Prime service by paying the one-time nominal charge of Rs 99.
The 72 million figure is way above analyst expectations and implies a 72%/95% conversion of total announced/likely active subscribers at the start of the offer.
Reliance Jio in a statement said as “In just one month, over 72 million Jio customers have signed up for Jio Prime. We, at Jio, are honoured and grateful for this tremendous response. I want to personally thank you for choosing Jio, and for being a founding member of the Jio movement.”
Notably, Jio services will become fully chargeable from 16 April for all non-Prime members and Prime members who do not recharge by 15 April or recharge with only the Rs149 voucher.
Jio has created the world’s largest greenfield 4G LTE wireless broadband network, with over 100,000 mobile towers. And we will add another 100,000 towers to our network in the coming months.
